You know when you
look for something
the thing you see
is almost certainly
the thing that it is not.

Not today. It swooped
and soared taking
a perch on a higher
branch of a tree at
the water’s edge.

Me and my loved one
looking, craning. We
had followed its flight
path. Now to find it.
“That’s a branch,”

my loved one, laughed.
“That’s not it either, Dad.”
(Oh to hear that name
called.) Then we saw it,
and upon seeing it we

could not look back.
We won’t look back.
If the eagle is freedom
and freedom is sweet,
sweet freedom is ours.

A little bird told me.
I know it when I see it.