The night is full of insomniacs googling insomnia. Yesterday an osprey was treading air in the same square meter of sky. We were sitting on a postage stamp of sand on the Chesapeake Bay. If we squinted, we could make believe we were at a real beach as speedboats bequeathed us fake waves from their wake. Normally I’d use the imperial measurement system – foot instead of meter – but metric sounds better here. The osprey was emitting an ear-piercing screech. Every so often she’d dive like a sleek winged bomber, then soar back to her hovering stance. I wonder why the U.S. system is called imperial. The Brits don’t have a corner on colonizing, but surely they’re more imperial than we are. Or they were anyway. For some reason I assumed the osprey was female. Maybe I recognized her hypervigilance, the faith that keeping your whole being trained on the danger du jour will make a difference, like sun through a convex lens. We mothers can burn a hole in a leaf. In a life. I can’t use the word convex without thinking of John Ashbery. Poetic imperialism. I ask my phone which country is more imperialistic, Great Britain or the United States. They have more territorial empire while we prefer economic and military hegemony. Great, now I have to google hegemony. How many of us are squinting and pretending to have what we want in our jobs, our love lives, our microwave-safe dishes of reheated meatloaf, our nations? Every morning as my neighbors leave for work, they say I’ll miss you, I’ll miss you more, No, I’ll miss you more as their twin SUVs idle in the drive. They found each other late in life. Relief became destiny. I look up osprey behavior. They dive and screech when their nests are threatened by predators – foxes, eagles, crows, snakes… humans. Duh. We’re the enemy.
Click here to read Erin Murphy on the origin of the poem.
Image by KaroGraphix Photography on unsplash.com, licensed under CC 2.0.
- Insomnia Chronicles LVI - November 10, 2026