Creek Running North

Why did I leave the safety of the sky?
From this promontory, high and bleak
I once would dive, would tumble toward the rock
and at the last dire second laugh aloft.
Sadness a bitter cold, despair a pyre
on which fine ebon wings are cremated;
crow’s feet transformed to humans’, clumsy shod
and graceless, without sensitivity.
Where once I covered miles with a wing flick,
these days are spent in plodding. Trackless days,
knee-cramp and ankle-breaking days, and I
trace and retrace stray paths. I ran for it,
this old familiar rock, from which I once
would rise in thermal soaring, just a stretch
a flick of leather-creased crow’s feet to kiss
the earth, and up. The way was straight and clear,
and only when I teetered at the brink,
these human arms no use in flight, these hands
stubby, unfeathered, did I turn. Behind
and all around me, delicate and pale
and azure, carpeting the barren earth,
lay a domain of blossoms, heartbreaking
and beautiful, and broken. In my haste
my stupid leaden feet had trampled them,
unseen until the damage had been done.

This is the cost of walking on the earth,
a legacy of hurt, one injury
layered upon another, and I wear
their weight upon my back, a Marley’s Chain
of impotent regret. Better to hop
from rock to barren rock on light crow feet,
black as this heart, uncovering the nests
of birds that lay their eggs upon the ground
and breaking them with swift, decisive strokes
to reach the meat within their splintering shells.