Nature Walk

A poem about dashed expectations, in anapestic trimeter. 🦅

And I saw not a single bald eagle
     as I walked the riparian ridge
where for desolate months every winter
     bald eagles are rumored to live

in the towering reaches of evergreens,
     bivouacs in the crags of the bluff,
peering out from their wild-woven eyries,
     questioning the blank heavens above.

All I heard was the howl of some coyote
     somewhere down in the thicket below,
sorrowful as a paw in a bear trap
     camouflaged by a blanket of snow.

Yet the closer I came to that howling,
     still from farther its echo rang out
as the coyote delivered his warning
     to the others: a stranger’s about.