If you ever lose heart and the earth seems as distant as stars fading into the noise of your busy mind, know this. That a tiny island exists in the blue hands of the ocean. That a tree grows upright into the salted clouds. That two eagles love each other enough to spend their lives greeting the morning sun together. That two eaglets stand in their nest, gazing at the heavens. Looking down to the forever ground. They eat and sleep and flap their wings. And one day in July, one by one, they will jump into the air. They will know the difference between existing and what is beyond. They will hold onto nothing. The hurricane will come, courage catching their pinions on fire, as they mount the wind, climbing ladders into realms of the invisible.


--T.L. Stokes






Sunday, December 25, 2011






Wild Things in the Night




The committee of roosters gathers
at my ankles, the night
drifts off like a loose horse.

In my ears the coyotes' laddered song
still lingers. Wild open throated.
A language not so strange
awakens the heart,

gleefully, from a simple dream.

I wake with the sun,
the field is empty.

I look down into the petal of my hand,
and in between the fingers,
one tuft of gold-gray fur remains.





c2011 T.L.Stokes (all rights reserved)
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)