In Praise of the World Enduring
Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving….
Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
Marge Piercy (“The Seven of Pentacles”)
……………………….Spring morning
sun, bloom, song, and I
observe eagle, heron, hawk
row their wings: first power rising
fierce and strong with intention
to glide aloft as if with no effort
exemplars of ease incarnate, and joy.
Vestigial memory stirs fresh desire
in my own shoulders, elbows, wrists: vitality
gleaned from dream time lost, some deep past
……………………….when I, too, could fly.
How small the thread of my human strand
among the myriad cords in the braid of life.
I shuck off yesterday’s brittle, petty confines.
Earthbound yet lifted by breath and senses
I marvel, give care, thanks, praise anew
……………………….as taught of old.
Mother, here again is your birthday:
one hundred years ago
……………………….you were eighteen.
Didn’t you, too, feel that urge to fly?
All your broken parts, and mine
…………..today
……………………….remade
a lovely mosaic
…………..the arching sky
……………………….a gathering of light.
© Carol Bindel
Carol Bindel has work published in Comstock Review, Time of Singing, UU World and more. Her 2012 book Inherited Estate: A Song Cycle is available online. She recently moved to the suburbs from her long time rural home in Northern Harford County but her work will forever resonate with metaphors in the natural world. Poetry continues to inform her life as she finds her way in elderhood.
The Loch Raven Review 