Miscalculation
Oct 8 2016


The act
is smooth, tactical, fierce.
In the soundless distance
violence turns to art
and death is stone cold blood.

The eagle
with the silver-sided fish
is labouring up,
water streaming
compact muscles flailing
in the blinding dry.
Wings pump,
powerfully, methodically
gaining  height.

The impression of  prey
beneath a flat grey lake.
But its grasp is fixed,
great curved talons 
locked-in,
and a monster fish
can pull it down.

The white belly 
of a bloated fish
an eagle drowned.
Back and forth
where waves lap the shore;
sodden feathers, captive legs,
eyes' dull stare.

I think this poem is about challenging assumptions. 

Because we reflexively identify with the predator:  we don’t think of ourselves as victims; we feel an affinity for the warm-blooded charismatic creature. But hunters fail often. And hunting can be as risky for predator as it is for prey. 

And because the  fish doesn’t just complete the scene --  a mere ornament in our view of the majestic eagle --  it’s also a living thing in its own right, worthy  of empathy.  In this sense, blinding dry -- despite being  only 2 words -- is important:   it tries to inhabit  the fish’s experience of an utterly incomprehensible event. Perhaps how we would feel, snatched-up by aliens into an unimagined world. I’m challenging the reader to flip her point of view from the  cold blooded scene playing out in the picturesque distance into something immediate and real.

The poem is also about contingency:  how in  a momentary miscalculation this beautiful, powerful, iconic bird  quickly meets its death. Every time we drive, we perform judgements that can be just as fateful and final.

The poem is  nature in tooth and claw:  the zero-sum contest where there is no life without death;  the grim end we all ultimately share.