They glide more than most birds, wings straight
As a sea plane's, never drunkenly tipping
Like the turkey vulture or flapping desperately
Like the crow. So rarely seen, they're like fate
Surprising you with its ineluctable black wing,
Or a revelation revealed parenthetically,
Two down strokes that lift you on the air
Into the unknowable, naturally aware.
Fishing, they've been known to grasp prey
To big too lift, and, too hungry to let go,
They drown in thrashed-up, freezing spray,
Their head and tail feathers ice and snow.
I have seen his eye up close, though caged.
He looked at me illimitably enraged.