Nisqually

At the riverbank listening for sea lions
from years ago the husk of their breath

a woman photographing trees
the rest of us staring up at a pair of falcons

the rest of us wanting to feel other lives pass through us
with swiftness and fear the migration we’ve read about

naming midflight what’s leaving us my son is twelve
and men along the path offer their scopes

so he can see each feathering hours lavished years between sightings
nights listening to recorded calls feathering their phones

to show what they’ve seen before and when my son
names each bird the men light up to have been loved in return

along the shore a duck which over the next hour
becomes a lesser scaup my son’s name entered

in the logbook of rarities a day of utter joy the blue beak dappled back
the particular rise of the headfeathers the golden eye opened and shut