Poetry Sunday: The Magnificent Frigatebird by Ada Limon

On trips to the coast, I have sometimes seen frigatebirds and truly they are magnificent! A bird that lives up to its name.

The Magnificent Frigatebird

by Ada Limon

Is it okay to begin with the obvious? I am full of stones—
            is it okay not to look out this window, but to 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-foot 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 Frigatebird.

            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 gular sacs saying, You are Magnificent. You are also Magnificent.

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

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

I am far away from tropical 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.