BIRDS
An 8-color reduction linocut
17 1/2" x 9 1/2" print size
21" x 12 1/2" paper size
Hand printed on BFK Rives paper
Edition: 10
Sold unframed
Price includes shipping within the U.S.
After the Splash
We step to the porch railing–
wine glasses in hand, Scrabble forgotten–
to spy a bird floundering in the cove,
dashing the sea with great, feathered
downbeats, almost obscured by the spray.
It’s a bald eagle and my heart thrashes with it.
I’m ready to canoe to the rescue,
my husband paddling, me leaning
over the bow, poised to pluck a frantic,
flapping, full-grown eagle out of the sea
in my bare arms. Its wing span is wider
than I am tall, its beak a scimitar.
But the bald eagle doesn’t need me.
It settles onto the water, plump as a duck,
turns beak to shore, scoops the sea with
feathery palms, and climbs out on a rocky
shelf, dragging in one talon a fish,
huge and silvery in sunlight.
Leslie Moore
Take Heart: More Poems from Maine, ed. Wesley McNair, Down East Books, 2016
What Rough Beasts by Leslie Moore, Littoral Books, 2022