Vespers in the Great Basin
by Danielle Beazer Dubrasky
Bald eagles gather among the elms with soft whistles
as they glide over snowfields of thistle and jackrabbits,
settle on branches, umber wings folded against their bodies,
albino heads tucked from the wind. Each winter we watch them
fly across the valley to this empty ranch,
stretch their wingspan beyond six feet,
their darkness growing in sunset until Venus appears in the west.
Driving home, your right hand fumbles with my fingers
as if with a rosary, while your left keeps the wheel in check.
Out the window I see a brown quarter horse lean against
a fence in snow, haunches turned to the wind. Our silence
meets the coldness that blows in through door jambs, the chimney.
Next January when mountain peaks glisten beneath miters of ice
we’ll return to the elms as eagles gather across the river
and the riven valley—they’ll hunch together on racked branches
of winter trees, still believing they can keep the cold at bay.
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First published in Sugar House Review, and Drift Migration (Ashland Poetry Press, 2021). This poem describes how bald eagles winter over in the valley west of Cedar City, Utah, while also referring to a marriage. In this poem, I like how I paid attention to both the imagery and the sound. I admire poetry lines that have “echoes” of sound patterns, such as alliteration or assonance. In the first two lines, such echoes exist in the words “whistles,” “glides,” “snow fields,” “thistle.” I worked hard on the fifth and sixth lines to create a sense of expansion that leads into constriction as the eagles’ bodies become too dark to see in the sunset.
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DANIELLE BEAZER DUBRASKY is the author of Drift Migration (Ashland Poetry Press, 2021). She teaches Creative Writing at Southern Utah University and directs the Grace A. Tanner Center for Human Values. danielledubrasky.com