the eagles and the ghosts

the eagles and the ghosts



On the high woven palace
royalty sleeps. Sun
fiddles and opens the sky.

Alexandra rises on her small legs
leaning on the breast
of her mother.

David tucks his wings
under the feather-broom.

Warmth from the burning heart
of their nest wells up
like water.

Below and around in the voicelessness
in the lower spectrum
growing stillness
they gather,

ghosts on limbs and cloud formations,
chatting about the weather,
the next low tide,

if what the fisherman caught
is a rat fish or greenling.

If crow will catch another midshipmen
for the eagle to steal.

Who's coming for mother's day.

In boxes far inland and across moving carpets
of whale fields they gather.

More and more ghosts. All varied
size and colors, some sleep while others
stand on their toes.

Guardians and watchers
learning the songs of hunger,
of love, of warning.

Something falls down. As one, they all turn
toward the crying.

They huddle and use the skills
they learned from raptors: when cold, cover,
when hungry, feed as soon as you can.

When tired, surround and rock to sleep.
Patient they wait, ghosts
know these things.

"Be still." they say. Healing
comes with time which isn't really here,
only the space between two things

you may think are disconnected.

There is a pause, a place where you can rest,
before the next beat moves toward you
like waves.

There is the night to rest after the day
of all that is happening. And rest before
night comes again. It is breath.

Balanced, on the axis, they dangle within
their globe of energy,

mingling, bumping
into each other,

loving the ocean of their existence.

Learning that even if the light is out,
and the room feels empty,

even if the one who lies so still upon
the floor, leaking life,

seems gone,

what you loved
and felt of their physical being

is still in your arms,
against your chest,

warm in the invisible light
of the spirit world.

Closer than your ears
or eyes.

Within the bird of your heart,
one with the surge
and flow.

Look, just out the window,
in the corner of your eye.
Did you see him, did you feel him?

Wait here with us. The room is full,
the couch has room for more.

Take the warm drink
of our friendship. Serve us your tears.

Even the eagles
are here on our shoulders. Nothing
is too heavy

that this love
cannot carry.










c2011 T.L.Stokes (all rights reserved)

Four Feathers from Fall City

For days I walked the streets of Fall City,
an unusually grounded little town,
its farm houses egg yolk and pond blue painted,
dormer windows shy and alert,
old porches nodding off,
mowed lawns, red barn hen house,
chickens reciting poetry over their morning egg,
and I passed by two feathers
and didn't pick them up.

Today I stopped and looked into a tree
like a wide hand curving its fingers open
with five crows fidgeting into different poses.
They interrupted and complimented each other
constantly. One flew off. There on the ground
at my feet were four crow feathers.
Two long wing pinions and two wide tail feathers.
Blue spears. Traveled shadows.

I put them fanned out like onyx knives
on the wood table by the soft light and three
rock candles Heather gave me.

At night, they float over me singing
old Beatles songs, tapping lightly on the window,
forgetting their names, how they got here,

where they misplaced their
warm black bodies.



for Shoeless Joe,
the greatest one-and-a-half legged crow
I ever met.

October 6, 2009