you can ask a stranger,
“What’s your spark bird?”
and be understood, provided
you’re standing by a wetland
and the stranger has binoculars,
a spotting scope, or a foot-long
telephoto. And when the stranger asks,
you say osprey, because the day
you walked down to the pier
at sunset on the summer solstice
and saw the big, masked brown-
and-white raptor pluck a trout
from the lake right in front of you,
it didn’t matter that ospreys are common
to every continent except Antarctica.
It changed you—one minute you were
a fish swimming in the shallows, the next
you were rising out of your element,
astonished to see for the first time
what had been there all along.
–
Lisa Morin Carcia’s poems have appeared in Connecticut River Review, ONE ART, Eunoia Review, Sheila-Na-Gig online, SWWIM Every Day, Talking River Review, North American Review, Floating Bridge Review, and elsewhere. She lives near Seattle, Washington.