Watching the Birds on the Lagoon in Boca Raton, Florida, With My Father

by Jan Zlotnik Schmidt

Image credit: Jonny Gios on Unsplash

You are a shadow here, a specter from my past, watching me

flip the pages of the bird book, looking at the difference

between a crow and a grackle, listening for the sharp wail

and screech of the limpkins or the squawking of ducks,

the wind rustling the leaves of the live oak sheltering the porch 

from the tropical sun. I read with you, search the waters with you.

You’re long gone for many years. Your last words to me were at least ten years old.

I remember long ago you would point to the bubbles on the surface

of the stream, tell me turtles lived in those waters, watched for the arrival

of the anhinga that dried its dark wings in the sun or the white heron

at the other end of the lagoon. You might nod, hold your joy in, clear

your throat, perhaps point out the way the currents moved with the wind,

turned pea green or light gray in twilight. Now I thumb my way through the book.

I wonder at the ways in which we both hold in our quiet pleasures. Our secret joy. 

I smile as I watch the great blue heron, his feathers slate blue with streaks of gray, his yellow beak arrowed into the air. I watch the bird wade into the shallows, looking for prey.    

In your 90s, did you relish the white wings of the ibis edged in black?   

The grace of their wings in flight?  Did we share this form of prayer?

***

Jan Zlotnik Schmidt

Jan Zlotnik Schmidt’s work has been published in many journals including Kansas Quarterly, The Alaska Quarterly Review. Her poetry volumes include We Speak in Tongues; She had this memory (the Edwin Mellen Press) and Foraging for Light (Finishing Line Press). Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Press Prize.