We watch him wait, patient, motionless,
on a high branch, perched above garden plots
stripped bare except for the rustle of mouse
or vole, rabbit or shrew—wait for motion
to show him his next meal. And if no quiver
reveals it soon enough, he knows, beyond the oaks,
there’s a bay where hundreds of coots gather
out of the wind in the sheltered part of the lake.
I think back to his piteous cries of spring—
calling for his parent to continue to feed him
in his first fledged days. Now he waits, no windhover
nor red-tailed hawk on the updraft—only his head tilts
and turns, ignoring our winter hiking group below,
our binoculars and lenses trained on his branch
as he’s captured by the photographer in our crew
with the yellow eyes that mark him still juvenile,
if wiser now in the ways of prey.
Robin Chapman
Robin Chapman’s work has been awarded the Cider Press Book Editors’ Award, the Posner Poetry Award, the Wisconsin Library Association’s Outstanding Book of Poetry Award, and the Helen Howe Poetry Award from Appalachia. She lives in Madison, WI. Panic Season (Tebot Bach, 2022, available from spdbooks.org) is her newest book.
Portage Magazine 