I do not need to see
your wings open to the sun
to know the cleansing breath
of your initial feathery flap,
even if all you use it for
is to regain balance.
For all of the priest’s
Jerusalem rhetoric
he fails to see or feel
your plumed curve mid-hover
above the smoldering violence
in today’s thunderous voices.
All the charting of the sky
is for naught.
Tragic storm clouds brew
unforgotten bygones
into lightning strikes
that char the earth,
rip open the grassland
and set flame
to the grounded dead
that know their ash and dust
is the basis of eternity.
copyright © 2020 Kenneth P. Gurney
Umflop 