Waiting for the light to change at 35th and Park, I see an eagle fly over.
My first thought (as always when I see an eagle): Gods, that's a big bird.
My second thought (craning my neck to see): It is an eagle!
My heart leaps up inside me, as it always does. I open my mouth to begin the song that you sing when you see an eagle; then I close it again, without singing.
Whatever that song may be, I don't know it.
That there should be a song that you sing when you see an eagle—an honor song, a song of soaring greeting—seemed to me in that moment, as it has ever since, utterly obvious.
That our people once had such a song also seemed—and seems—to me to go without saying.
Alas that so much has been taken away; alas that so much has been lost.
Straddling the Mississippi River, Minneapolis—the name, a Dakota-Greek hybrid, means the “Water City”—is truly a City of Eagles. In these past years, eagles have become an increasingly common—but still always uplifting—sight here.
So whatever the song that you sing when you see an eagle, my friends, we'd better start listening for it now.
Gods know, we're going to need it.