or sea-eagle,
what the guidebook says is
white, grayish brown, and “possessed of weak eye-
masks” in its non-migratory island

instance, is blue.
Blue, riding thermal bands
so low over the water it picks up
the water’s color, reticulate

tarsi tipping
the light crests; and picks up
one of the silver fish cutting the surface
there, so the fish is blue, too, flapping-gone-

slack in the grasp
of its claws—as only
the owl shares an outer reversible
toe-talon, turned out for such clutching;

as the water,
in turn, picks up the sky-
depth reflective blue sent down from ages
beyond, into which the osprey lifts now

without a least
turning of wing-chord though
“they are able to bend the joint in their
wing to shield their eyes from the light”; what I

mean is, by the
time I tell you this it’s
gone: fish-and-bird, this “bone-breaker,” brown
or gray “diurnal raptor,” back into

the higher trades. Someday, too, this blue—