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






Monday, July 30, 2012


Hornby Island, B.C.
Canada
Photograph by
California Watcher

c2012 California Watcher (all rights reserved)

 

Monday, July 23, 2012


Mother


Fierce god eye
untrembled reflection
seeing all things.

Into my waiting hands
come her most glorious feathers,

cast off
after the arrow of her attention,
mottled fledgeling
learns the sky.

She can wait forever
watching the offspring.

Her other half,
Proud Arrow
across the lake,

watches her
with adoration.



for the Snoqualmie Eagles

Friday, July 20, 2012

Friday, July 13, 2012



My love lies hidden,
and the butterfly zippered in the dark
does not forget the dream

of wind,
of sailing the kite of her body,
of nothing to catch her.



Rushing





All the hours leading to dawn
punctuate into a path of the black horse
rushing into us,

I forget I ever heard the voice of God,

and want to stare into the throat
of the explosive word,

hoof beats, all things leaving,
my own heart blotting out
all of the light.