Flight ...

'Tis June! The Peregrine Falcons (an endangered specie) have returned to lay their eggs and hatch their young. A mated pair of Mourning Doves have again built their twiggy nest on one of my balcony wrought iron chairs. I expect them any day now to begin the “mothering of their two white eggs” during incubation time. The robins, the geese and swans are doing likewise. Butterflies have returned from their Mexican winter to flit around our gardens. Flight to all is their mode of travel and livelihood. Our English language affords us opportunity to consider flight as a medium, to not only physically travel, but to extend our fantasies and memory into realms of rapid flight.

The Fledgeling Bird

is pushed from his nest

to Learn to Fly...he Must!

Then there was Lindbergh Charlie

whose Flight 'cross the Atlantic

made History in '27.

The Fugitive takes Flight

when a crime he's committed

...unwanting to be found!

The Eagle, the Hawk the Condor

glide through the valleys

and soar into skies of blue.

The Flight of the Bumble Bee

from the Tsar Saltan Legend

was musical-ized in an opera

(byRimsky-Korsikov)

which tells of a Prince

becoming a Bee

and stings his villanous relatives!

There was a time you'll recall

...a long drive west

from your eastern state home...

I felt I'd left Paradise

and to Earth returning.

Sentimentally you asked,

“Your angel wings...where are they?”

The Greatest Flight

that I currently know

is Your Imagination!

A conversation we share

ope's the door ...of memory past.

So lucid, your recall ~

an incident you relate:

Your days of Youth, WWII, 

New York City life.

“Please take me with you”

like Anne Murray's “Snowbird”

...and forever...

I'll happily be!

Merle Baird-Kerr

composed September 14, 2009