We currently live on the Intracoastal Waterway in Treasure Island, FL. We have been in our this house for nine years and every year around this time, we are joined by an osprey (also called a fish hawk) who sits on the cross of the church, across our little finger of the Intracoastal, with his eyes on the water below. I’ve tried taking pictures of him (I always imagine it to be a him), but since I don’t yet own a camera with a telephoto lens, it's hard to see the osprey in the picture. Nevertheless, here he is, looking like a finial atop the church cross.
We have named this osprey Ozzy (very original, I know) assuming it was the same osprey coming back year after year. But last year we had a surprise because the osprey had a different call or keen. It still keened but it was slightly higher and the end part was different too. OMG, we thought, it has been a different osprey every year! And this year has proven our theory to be true: this year's osprey is gigantic, so much so, that at first, we thought it was an eagle. You can clearly see a great patch of white on its neck and head. In former ospreys, this white patch was hardly noticeable from this distance. Breaking with tradition, we call this year’s osprey, Big Boy instead of Ozzy, because a big boy he certainly is. His keen is different too. It sounds like he struggles to keen, we have joked, because he is obese and so it is an effort to make his trademark sound.
I have read a lot about ospreys and one fact is quite startling. Sometimes, when the osprey dives for a fish, it miscalculates the size and, if the fish is too large, the fish will pull the osprey under and carry it along. The osprey, of course, drowns. Sometimes fishermen will later catch the fish with the osprey talons still embedded.
I find this to be quite amazing and it makes me marvel on the often perilous nature of living.
In any case, here is a poem I wrote about the osprey, a somewhat dark poem since we had just moved to this townhouse community and nature seemed less than wild, trimmed as it was, to the very core of its existence. Being on the water is nice, but even our inlet is man-made. We like our nature a little wilder and we often drive to wilderness areas to get our fix of wild nature. But the ospreys hunting near our home have totally saved us year after year. In any case, the juxtaposition of wild nature (osprey) vs. humans editing wild nature in our complex, is what prompted this poem.
The Osprey
We tamed the world, I know.
It needed to be done, because…
well, there must have been a reason.
It frightened us, perhaps.
December comes in with mild air,
soft breezes over a captured inlet
of still water.
Somebody rolled the sun in gauze,
its fire muted; a clever bit
of engineering.
Sit quietly, listen:
machines hum behind the scenes
keeping it all in place.
Twilight descends across the inlet.
A lamppost’s gentle glow
unfurls over shadowed depths.
An osprey perched on the post
beats its wings powerfully,
then plunges toward the water’s surface--
there are no screams
while the world shatters in unstrung fragments.
(c) B.J. Lee All Rights Reserved
First published in Long Story Short, December 2010
Here's a link that tells a little bit more about the osprey.
I have read a lot about ospreys and one fact is quite startling. Sometimes, when the osprey dives for a fish, it miscalculates the size and, if the fish is too large, the fish will pull the osprey under and carry it along. The osprey, of course, drowns. Sometimes fishermen will later catch the fish with the osprey talons still embedded.
I find this to be quite amazing and it makes me marvel on the often perilous nature of living.
In any case, here is a poem I wrote about the osprey, a somewhat dark poem since we had just moved to this townhouse community and nature seemed less than wild, trimmed as it was, to the very core of its existence. Being on the water is nice, but even our inlet is man-made. We like our nature a little wilder and we often drive to wilderness areas to get our fix of wild nature. But the ospreys hunting near our home have totally saved us year after year. In any case, the juxtaposition of wild nature (osprey) vs. humans editing wild nature in our complex, is what prompted this poem.
The Osprey
We tamed the world, I know.
It needed to be done, because…
well, there must have been a reason.
It frightened us, perhaps.
December comes in with mild air,
soft breezes over a captured inlet
of still water.
Somebody rolled the sun in gauze,
its fire muted; a clever bit
of engineering.
Sit quietly, listen:
machines hum behind the scenes
keeping it all in place.
Twilight descends across the inlet.
A lamppost’s gentle glow
unfurls over shadowed depths.
An osprey perched on the post
beats its wings powerfully,
then plunges toward the water’s surface--
there are no screams
while the world shatters in unstrung fragments.
(c) B.J. Lee All Rights Reserved
First published in Long Story Short, December 2010
Here's a link that tells a little bit more about the osprey.
Tara at A Teaching Life has the roundup today!
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