Where Eagles Fly

WHERE EAGLES FLY

You know there is something wrong when even the poets wrap their feelings in words and hide them behind Longfellow’s childhood shadow.

I turn on some country music to feel a real heartbeat;

Or classical to re-locate my spirit.

Have we run out of words for beauty,

Or are there just no eagles flying over my house anymore.

From the middle of the pond a goose honks relentlessly;

I want to swim out to her, but the water is just too muddy.

 

Now I sit in the middle of a traffic jam--

Waiting for the light to change me into some other place.

In front of me a mother talks on the phone

While her children sit quietly belted in their seats in back.

Perhaps there will be a playground over the next hill.

Behind me is Granddaddy’s house.

It has five rooms, but then the kitchen doesn’t count.

The kitchen—where my brother and I sat on a long bench

Fighting over the drumstick the chicken walked on just yesterday.

 

It never rained on my Sundays of childhood.

I was beautiful just because Daddy said so.

And Christmas trees went to Heaven.

 

Heaven was Grandma's kitchen.

It smelled of peaches and wood and biscuits baking—But mostly of Grandma.

It was filled with family that sang classical country music.

The sun shone through the front window, the back door,

And right through the wall that had no windows or doors.

Just outside the back door hangs the swing

Where I swung right through childhood.

I feel the wood growing hard underneath me.

I can’t catch the eagles, so I stop pumping.

 

But the light has changed now.

The young mother stops her car by the city park.

The children jump out, kites in hand.

I smile at the children’s squeals

And the kite with the picture of a large bird and words written across the top:

 

“Where eagles fly.”