The Magnificent Frigatebird

Ada Limón

Is it okay to begin with the obvious? I am full of stones—

             is it okay not to look out this window, but look out another?

A mentor once said, You can't start a poem with a man looking

             out a window. Too many men looking out a window.

What about a woman? Today is a haunting. One last orange

             on the counter: it is a dead fruit. We swallow dead things.

Once in Rio near Leblon, large seabirds soared over the vast

             South Atlantic Ocean, I had never seen them before.

Eight feet wingspan and gigantic in their confident gliding, black,

             with a red neck like a wound, or a hidden treasure. Or both.

When I looked it up, I learned it was the Magnificent Fridatebird.

             It sounded like that enormity of a bird had named itself.

What a pleasure to say, I am magnificent. And too, they traveled as a team,

             so I wondered if they named each other. Generously tapping

one another's deeply forked tail, or their plumage glistening with salt air,

             their gulag sacs saying, You are magnificent. You are also magnificent.

It makes me want to give all my loves adjectives they deserve:

             You are Resplendent. You are Radiant. You are Sublime.

I am far away from subtropical waters. I have no skills for flight or wings

             to skim the waves effortlessly like the wind itself. But from here,

I can still imagine rapture, a glorious caught fish in the mouth of a bird.

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