Field Guide

Hudson Review, The, Summer 2003 by Schmitt, Peter

. . . and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.

-Genesis 2:19

Because it wasn't enough

just to see him-

we had to know his name-

on the screened-in porch

we glanced back and forth

from Peterson's Field Guide

to a dead treetop

by the shore

where a bird whose size

we'd seen nowhere near

the lake in years

perched motionless staring

at the blurry text

of the not-yet-frozen water.

And naturally

the very moment we settled

on the color plate, finally,

making positive I.D.,

was exactly when we missed

the dive he was made for-

for as our gaze

lifted off the page

he was already rising up

and beating away

with dinner flapping

in his talons,

leaving us his name

in a wake of spray-osprey!-

"whose dive,"

Peterson's advises,

"is steep, feet-first,

spectacular."