JANUARY 1ST

Last year’s river is still here,

frozen bank to bank,

except at the fastest narrows

where I’ve come to watch gulls

and goldeneyes bathe, squabble

over food, loaf on the white ice

like it was hot sand.

Then an eagle is overhead,

almost too high to see.

But they see it and are up

all at once, beating upstream

like the last scraps of daylight.

Silence.  Six degrees

below zero.  Time

to move on.