"Running With the Eagle"
This poem, the first of three that will be appearing at Every Day Poets, is up today! This is an older poem, one I wrote for a poetry class in college--I believe we had a choice between an academic research paper and writing a dozen or so of our own poems. Hmmm, wonder how long I weighed those options...
At one level, this is very much a literal memory of the first time I saw a bald eagle in the wild, canoeing down the Little Muskegon River when I was a camp counselor. Early in the 3- or 4-hour trip, I saw a large bird fly around the bend, wondered if it was an eagle, but then dismissed the possibility. Much later, as we neared the backwater of the Croton Dam, I came around a corner and finally realized that this really was an eagle. It flew downriver from us a pair of times, but the third time it simply perched on a high branch and ignored us as we floated underneath. In the meantime, it had frightened a great blue heron, and the rest of the trip to the backwater, the heron took off, screaming at us, each time we rounded a corner. I've never, before or since, heard a heron make any such vocalization.
I set myself up a bit by dedicating this to Hopkins. I mean, where do I get off mentioning his name alongside my poem? The poem itself doesn't feel like a Hopkins poem, and so I just want to say that it isn't meant to. In certain places, I made conscious word choices to create a brief feel of his poetry, but otherwise it is not meant as a pastiche or imitation at all. The opening line, though, is meant to be a response to his "Windhover," which begins, "I caught this morning morning's minion..." and is also about a bird of prey (sort of). And that's all I'll say about that.
This poem, the first of three that will be appearing at Every Day Poets, is up today! This is an older poem, one I wrote for a poetry class in college--I believe we had a choice between an academic research paper and writing a dozen or so of our own poems. Hmmm, wonder how long I weighed those options...
At one level, this is very much a literal memory of the first time I saw a bald eagle in the wild, canoeing down the Little Muskegon River when I was a camp counselor. Early in the 3- or 4-hour trip, I saw a large bird fly around the bend, wondered if it was an eagle, but then dismissed the possibility. Much later, as we neared the backwater of the Croton Dam, I came around a corner and finally realized that this really was an eagle. It flew downriver from us a pair of times, but the third time it simply perched on a high branch and ignored us as we floated underneath. In the meantime, it had frightened a great blue heron, and the rest of the trip to the backwater, the heron took off, screaming at us, each time we rounded a corner. I've never, before or since, heard a heron make any such vocalization.
I set myself up a bit by dedicating this to Hopkins. I mean, where do I get off mentioning his name alongside my poem? The poem itself doesn't feel like a Hopkins poem, and so I just want to say that it isn't meant to. In certain places, I made conscious word choices to create a brief feel of his poetry, but otherwise it is not meant as a pastiche or imitation at all. The opening line, though, is meant to be a response to his "Windhover," which begins, "I caught this morning morning's minion..." and is also about a bird of prey (sort of). And that's all I'll say about that.
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