Poem: “Bald Eagle”

Your image in on my credit card,
you and the old red, white, and blue.
Each purchase receives your scrutiny
if not approbration: yes,
I should buy less chocolate and more fish.
You’re on my green bills, too,
an endorsement of bold shopping habits,
of soaring to Target and descending,
talons outstretched.
I saw you once beside the freeway
perched in a naked winter tree
waiting for fatalities, presumably.
You have to be practical; meat is meat.
Even the emblem
of the United States of America
must eat.

“Bald Eagle”  from On Speaking Terms. Copyright © 2010 by Connie Wanek. Reprinted with permission of Copper Canyon Press.