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, June 7, 2011

Missing the Boat


MISSING THE BOAT



First in line at the ferry terminal
the only car in the wide gray parking lot.
I write by the windows while you buy
a scone.

We end one journey beginning another.
Like life and death, exciting,
sad and glorious.

My hair is full of eagle feathers,
your arms look like wings.

Our heads are slowly turning
white and the wind
has become something different.

Who knows whose ancestor
travels back to me. Whose message
is typed across a black wing?

Surely the Grandmothers
will of these verses
teach us to read.


for Idaho, with gratitude



c2011 TLStokes (all rights reserved)
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