“To See Small Fish in High Branches”

To See Small Fish
in High Branches

My eyeballs’ curvature feathers the forest.
I choose precision binoculars,
barium glass crisping texture and edge.
This crystal amplifies the air’s flux
of lumens, gathers them up
like stray contours and plumes.
A bird forms in bouquets of light.

Without prisms, I see hawks
circle a blue afternoon, their tails
ablaze; a yellow-mauve iris,
the veins of its beard geometric
etching on sepal; the fluttering hem
of a cloudy lake; the startling girth
of a heron’s nest lofted in sycamore.

The heron nestlings call for glass.
Its mesmeric gaze. To pierce the sky,
to see the heads bob, the parents’
talons, their powder down, the blue-
grey vigil as they tend the glossy
chicks — nebs, and tongues, and glints
of small fish in high branches.