"In An Eagle's Nestling"

In An Eagle's Nestling




We took no photograph
of that fledgling peace;
a graph upon a map,
a salmon sun, raw upon
the horizon, blessed us.
That maitre d' of the soul's
arrival, Spirit dressed
in a flag, a drape, a shroud
agape upon the flyer:
that bird as symbol, a
flap of heart. Would it serve?
Here, now, learning to speak,
to soar. We were learning to begin,
too sore. We were learning to begin,
again—that constant rolling
up the matted nights, that constant
rowing toward the shore of what
we think we desire. That bird.
That beast of a State. That veil.
A fingerless ring hawing up
through a recital of wings.
This bird. This heart. Dear heart,
deer-hearted in the distance
once. I tell you, autumn sings
in the betrayal
of proximity—one edge
too far; another, the darker
sister, a mother of another—
you, deciding. All of that.
A bird I didn't catch, there
on the side of a mountain
lake I didn't drive us to:
your breath, a hair
away from me. All of me
beneath the shadow of a dime,
home to a shadow of crime.
You, loving that accounts
manager of some made
for life movie, that soccer mom
of the what-should-I-do

now

that a spark of freedom
flared there in that nest:
you and me, and some setting
that has us sitting out the part;
a new beginning in the world
and chaste, too chaste,
this sometime used to be—
now alive and breathing
here beside a Rocky shore
of more, more open, more
mouth, more noticing.
As I held you, a bird
was learning to open the wind,
to trust. Again. Us, a new
honeymoon, a new date
on the calendar of lust
and fulfillment, same sullen
thing — no more. Hope on a
wing. Freedom in a word
breathed heavily in;
and it takes. Oxygen relieved
through the trees, those officiates
of this marriage to the will
of a world which allows us
to see. "I love you"
in a world, in a bird.



6/8/05
Copyright 2005 by Lorna Dee Cervantes
All rights reserved.