On Flew Off an Eagle by Danny Rosen
By Alysse Kathleen McCanna
Hello listeners, I’m Alysse Kathleen McCanna, here for Poets on the Plains. Today I’m excited to share a poem with you by a wonderful poet I’m lucky to call friend, Danny Rosen.
Danny Rosen lived in Philadelphia until 1980. At the University of Wyoming he studied geology to learn about what he was climbing. For many years he worked as an independent teacher, taking the Western Sky, an inflatable planetarium, into schools throughout Colorado. Over time, all things stone and star coalesced in Fruita to become the Lithic Bookstore & Gallery, which Rosen has run since 2015. Rosen’s books include The Tuscan Journals, Primate Poems, Ghosts of Giant Kudu, and Suspended Erosion.
Here’s Rosen’s poem Flew Off An Eagle.
FLEW OFF AN EAGLE
Out West Turn on the way to Sixteen,
the Bookcliffs
loom up from the soft horizontal muds
of the Cretaceous Seaway.
The ancient beach - now slowly receding
tough rock - losing to the sun
in a glowing spasm. Two ravens cry
and float tiny from a middling knifed ridge.
Slope and Cliff.
Mud and Sand.
Sea rise and fall. Wavelike the beach
moved back and forth. Walking on
interbedded sandstone and shale
with the small dog - oblivious to scale - the
coyotes
screamed their yip. I found an eagle feather
and thought I could almost
believe in god.
Of course, I too, walk on water
several months a year.
Up high, an unseen movement heard.
Rock fall, echo down, and recede.
From the high ridge
the snow-covered great valley
looks like it could be uninhabited.
Maybe late Cretaceous.
One or two dim lights,
now three;
a hard-eyed woman
in a small shelter
builds a fire.
Humanity
on the edge of the sea. Quiet,
young Venus sharp
above the western dune.
To have one true Friend in this life is enough.
Twice last week, on the ridgeline, a coyote
leapt into the sky and flew off an eagle.
This poem embraces the passage of time and acts of transformation as blessings from the natural world. Time actually collapses, bringing the Cretaceous into the contemporary. For those of you who, like me, have forgotten what we once learned of geological time, the Cretaceous is the longest geological period of the Mesozoic Era, spanning from roughly 145 to 66 million years ago–these lengths of time are simply impossible for us to comprehend. The Cretaceous is memorable for being the final chapter for the dinosaurs, the period in which flowering plants emerged, and for its dramatic end by asteroid. Here, Rosen asks us to see our surroundings as a reminder of time passed, as a living mark of the earth’s evolution–and thus our own.
This poem invites marvel at our surroundings. There are many shapes and sounds and beings to observe: ravens, a small dog, coyotes, a woman, a Friend, an eagle–and of course, our speaker, whose wandering and reflection on the natural landscape, its history and its inhabitants, is interrupted by those human considerations of time and the celestial. To me, these considerations bring to mind these lines from Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day”: “I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. / I do know how to pay attention…” “Flew off an Eagle” is this kind of prayer through close attention, through adoration, through wonder.
But, the shapeshifting coyote, that trickster, slithers through the poem to make sure the speaker and we as readers aren’t fooled into romanticizing the landscape: the knifed ridge, an unseen movement heard, the animals’ screams and cries, all serve as reminders that wilderness is indeed wild.
The poem concludes that “To have one true Friend in this life is enough,” an aphorism that encourages us as readers to think of our own true Friends, human and animal alike. It’s a remarkable sentiment to end a poem, but then–the coyote metamorphoses into an eagle in flight. This is maybe a metaphor for death, or transcendence of the human or the body through nature, or even what god might look like–and it lifts this poem into the wind like a feather we watch until it disappears into distance.
I met Danny when he judged a poetry contest way back in 2010 when I was just a baby-poet. He chose my poem as the winner, which was a beginning of a new path in my journey as a writer. I’ll be forever grateful for Danny’s decision and always in awe of the way the universe connects us to the people we need to meet at just the right time–the way the speaker in this poem encounters the shapeshifting coyote. A true Friend, indeed.
Thank you for listening to Poets on the Plains. I’m Alysse Kathleen McCanna, coming to you from Eagle, Colorado.
POETS ON THE PLAINS HOST
Alysse Kathleen McCanna is the author of FishWife (Black Lawrence Press), winner of the 2025 Colorado Book Award in poetry. Her poetry has appeared in North American Review, The Rumpus, Poet Lore, TriQuarterly, and other journals. Her work has been supported by the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Tucson Festival of Books, New York State Summer Writers Institute, and Sundress Academy for the Arts. She holds a PhD in English from Oklahoma State University, an MFA from Bennington College, and is an Associate Professor of English at Colorado Mountain College in the Vail Valley. She and her husband spend most of their time tending to our animal menagerie, keeping houseplants alive, and exploring the BLM trails near their home.https://www.alyssemccanna.com/
FEATURED POET
Danny Rosen lived in Philadelphia until 1980. At University of Wyoming he studied geology to learn about what he was climbing. For many years he worked as an independent teacher, taking the Western Sky Planetarium, an inflatable planetarium, into schools throughout Colorado. Over time, all things stone and star coalesced in Fruita, Colorado to become the Lithic Bookstore & Gallery which Danny has run since 2015. Previous publications include The Tuscan Journals (Cuneiform Press) Primate Poems (Lithic Press) Ghosts of Giant Kudu (Kattywompus) and Suspended Erosion (Lithic). https://www.lithicpress.com/index.php/authors/25-danny-rosen
