Eagle Mother

Eagle Mother, I feel you watching them.

You watch them soaring higher in ever-widening circles, now at times disappearing against the glare of a harsh blue sky.  You see them vanish, reappear, then vanish again.  You call to them, but they don’t hear.  Their sight rests elsewhere;  they can see things you cannot see, hear the call you cannot hear.

Sometimes – far less often now – their flight seems awkward – a momentary ruffled feather in the thermal – and you remember fluffy screeching chicks with head feathers askew.  If you look closely, you can still see the awkward chicks in the powerful young adults, just as you could sometimes see in the nestlings, the soaring raptors they would become.

A pivot mishandled, and you want to fly after them, but that would only slow them down.  You who would have killed or died to protect them – they no longer need you, Eagle Mother.  They are stronger and faster than you will ever be again.  What will you do with all the love you used to blanket them with?  You feel so full with it that you could burst.  Just as you did when you first saw them.

Eagle Mother, you know I feel the call of the wind once again.  My heart feels young, like theirs.  Will I too soar in disappearing circles?  If you fly with me, will your chicks return and find their nest decaying, dead, deserted?

Eagle Mother, you hope some day when their lives are full and complete, they will remember.  They will remember she who gave them life, and who gave her life to them completely.  And they will return to show you their catch, their brides, or their own fuzzy chicks.  And they will bear you up into that infinite blue sky, higher than you can go alone.  You want to be here when that day arrives.  Your heart feels ripped asunder.

And the wind is calling me once again.  Fly with me.  Eagle Mother.


 - For C.