We learn it means eagle near when
the colony of Royal Terns foraging at water’s edge
up and flies en masse.
Not even our guide knows how they knew—
she barely spotted his thick black wings against clouds.
Then the telltale white glints as he banks
on a thermal, heads toward the flock,
now forming a great semi-circle over the sea.
Whenever someone points to another eagle,
we all snap photos.
My husband and I hold back from the group.
He says “Doesn’t everything seem more wondrous
on a honeymoon in your sixties?”
Gives me a kiss for each sighting.
Later—on miles of beach
with only shore life and wild horses—
the two of us see terns rise again in that urgent flutter.
An eagle trails an unlucky one.
Her agility keeps her ahead,
as they loop and loop, and we root for her, though
tern-to-eagle on this island must be hundreds-to-one.
We now hate the predator, forgetting the guide
had just renewed our awe for nature’s sagacity.
The symbiosis of Spanish moss and live oaks.
The unexpected gift of fires and hurricanes
—at nearly perfect twelve-year stretches—
carving light gaps in the maritime forest:
Sapling oaks, loblolly pines, other beauties
get a chance to replace the aging.
We don’t see how the chase ends.
The birds become dots, then disappear,
and I’m looking down. Intact somehow among
tide-tossed debris: a butterfly-like coquina,
smaller than my fingernail, delicate as mica.
I don’t save shells anymore but tuck this charm away,
say a little prayer to the bivalve mollusk who made it.
Back home, we find its hinge broken.
Like teen girls who each wear half a heart on a chain,
I put one wing into his sock drawer
and the other in mine.
–
Karen Paul Holmes won the 2023 Lascaux Poetry Prize and received a 2024 Pushcart Special Mention. Poetry credits include The Writer’s Almanac, The Slowdown, Diode, Glass, Plume, and books: No Such Thing as Distance and Untying the Knot. She hosts Atlanta’s Side Door Poets.