Golden Eagle
       

Flight is a gaunt hunger let loose, working the lands
from ridge to ridge. Neck craned, her gaze is taut

as the sky's lion light. The stretched-open wings
full as sails shifting angles. Twelve feet from tip

to tip. she is almost unflappable, curled along the edges
where thermals spiral up. The whole body bronzed

in sun, the rippling meadows of brightness below
afloat on the notion of extended wings.

July's slopes have gone crisp, rippling with tinsel-sounds,
miner's lettuce, the dry music of wallflowers,

the bleached and the frayed, the grasses snapping
into themselves. Wind reveals well-squirreled trails

like pencil lines, erased and re-sketched over and over.
Now she swoops. This is when flight is the fastest heat,

intention combining the body's light and the mind
darkening all but the drop.

Let X be the point of the slam. Talons lock
on a flurry of fur, the squirming, the giving in.

Let Y be wedged deep in mid-level branches,
a luminous eyrie, her clutch of newborns cloaked in down.

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Copyright © 2019 Maya Khosla All rights reserved
from All the Fires of Wind and Light
Sixteen Rivers Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission