Seen through the eagle's eyes, the poem describes what it is like to be caught, handled by humans, fitted with a transmitter, and released. The humans are "wingless birds" with "strange soft claws," a fresh way of looking at hands. The eagle is free and the rock field falls away, but the speaker admits it only "for a moment" felt over.
What lingers is the feeling of being touched and the small weight on its back. The speaker rides the wind, yet something rides the speaker. A question sits at the centre: what kind of clutching leaves the heart calm? Here the eagle is the one being gripped, and it isn't at peace.
The mood is uneasy but also strangely alert. The device makes the eagle aware of itself as something that throbs and chafes, more than a hunter with beak and talons. The scattered "here" repeated at the end feels like both a pulse and a signal, while the mountains keep circling below.