Big and Small

All the little birds must get sick
of the eagle, enrollees
at the writing conference taking

breaks at the edge
of the bluff to watch it in its tree.
I was sipping beer when it burst

into flight, a glide and then
out of sight. Every day, walking
from one session to another,

from the image in poetry
to the exhumation of memory,
I find myself staring at the corpse

of a former bird, a little black,
a little white, lying upside down
in the grassy strip between

the sidewalk and the street. Flies
own it now. Next to it, a stick.
Did the stick have anything

to do with its demise? Or was it fate,
the stick an accident of juxtaposition?
I am sure of only one thing.

The eagle had nothing to do with this,
or he would have taken the corpse home
like a commuter dad, briefcase

on the floor, a loaf of bread
from that great bakery near his office
set on the table, for his family.

---

Stuart Watson’s first poetry collection, Death is the Dismount, was released by Poetry Box Publishing in summer 2026. His poetry appears in Rattle, Broadkill Review, Beach Reads, the Muleskinner Journal, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Horror Sleaze Trash, Abandoned Mine, Al Dente Journal, Stanchion, Southword, The Glass Post, Backwards Trajectory, Pause for Paws, and more. He lives in Hood River, Oregon, with his wife and their current “best” dog.