Two Poems: Daniel Donaghy
eagles with Eaglets on Webcam —Decorah, Iowa*
I’d seen the steel stares of broken-winged rescues on zoos’ stripped branches and birch boughs, and cartooned versions of their spread wings and fearsome faces in silhouette on football helmets and sweatshirts and faded car trunk magnets, and I’ve marveled at photos in which they glide stiff-winged across blue-blurred western skies and swoop down talus slopes to snatch in their talons salmon and suckers with a grip ten times stronger than a man’s, but until my daughter sent me a link to a webcam watching a mother and father nurse their just-hatched babies in a windstorm, I’d never seen a bald eagle’s fierceness displayed as love. In five minutes, I’ll teach Contemporary Poetry. She’ll log in to Psychology of Infants and Toddlers. For the past year, her college has been her room, my classroom the basement, my students Zoom boxes of names, most without faces, their cameras turned off,