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






Tuesday, January 22, 2013


Snow Ghost

 

 

I am the lame horse in the blanketed field
looking out past a small ghost of a stump.
Nothing here has happened all day, then you walk
into the sticks and frozen grass of our field in the stillness of winter.
You move closer and I look to see just what it is you are looking at.
Ah, the cat’s eyes. White bowl of her face, the almost grin.
As if in her Arctic sweater dwells another universe.
You love her as you never have loved before;
she stays to have you take her photograph,
pretends it is nothing to her,
and you will never
know her name.