Terri sent me this poem and asked if we would like to publish it on our website. I think it is absolutely beautiful. I hope you love it as much as I did! Thanks to Terri for sharing it!
Bald Eagle
by Terri Kirby Erickson
Decorah, Iowa, 2020
A bald eagle sits on the topmost branch
of a white oak tree, wings outstretched,
her pale head coppered by the morning
sun. Her fledglings are sleeping once
again, in the nest. A day and a night in
the wild has shown the eaglets how it
feels to part from everything they have
known, and they are tired. Sounds that
were muffled by the cries of siblings
and their own high-pitched whistling,
were magnified when facing the hours
alone—the chatter of smaller birds, the
laughter of people on the winding trail
below, cars speeding down the distant
highway—so much of the world yet to
be discovered. But this morning, these
three eaglets, so recently fledged, have
returned to the bower where they were
born, each with a piece of the wide blue
sky tucked beneath their wings. And the
mother, like mothers everywhere whose
children are safe in their beds, can rest.
Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of five collections of poetry and is an avid fan of the Decorah Bald Eagle family! She lives with her husband in North Carolina.
The Raptor Resource Project