Poetry: Wings

Flocks of avian beings fly
in rows of breathing ribs
that soar across the sky.
Sometimes a feather falls
as an offering,
down, down to the grass
and I, the lucky soul
who walks by to find it.
A starling whirrs by
in a feathery blur
that smells
of earthworms and rivers.
A heron whooshes above me
and I can almost hear
the babbling creek
inside his beak
as a fish flops
in his mouth,
its scales so luminescent
I swear I can hear those, too,
because shimmer
should have a sound.

I wonder why birds flying
can bring me to tears.
I yearn to be
orioled, finched, wrenned
like they are.
The wings are the thing.
They remind me of angels,
those unseen beings I believe in.
I think these thoughts
as I walk without wings.
Sometimes in my dreams
I am one of them,
willing myself to take flight,
if only for a few moments.
But, on this morning
I walk down a sidewalk
across earth's timeline.
I spy
a delicate, blue egg,
fallen and cracked,
its world shattered
on the gravel of a man-made road.

© Sherri Brannon


I wrote this poem on my walk the other day...discovering the cracked egg gave me the perfect way to end it. Thank goodness for the Notes feature on my iPhone - I was stopping constantly to write down my thoughts. Thanks so much for stopping by.