Ascent

The eagle does not ask the storm for leave —
she banks into the wind that means to break her,
and what was meant to drown her lifts her higher,
each thunderhead a stair, each gust a wager.

The sparrows stay below and peck at crumbs,
trading their small grievances like seed.
They squabble over fences, wires, and scraps —
she watched them once, and felt no pull, no need.

She carries no grudge skyward. As she rises,
she leaves the squabbles unjudged, not scorned —
they are not hers to weigh. The climbing eagle
drops every stone the lower world has thrown.

She flies the distance — not to flee, but cleanse:
for shallowness has wings, but they are short.
It cannot cross the miles that she can cross;
it starves on heights it never thought to court.

Yes — there's a piercing in her wing. It lingers.
The pain flies with her for a while, a shadow —
then thins like morning mist, and leaves her hollow
of nothing but the sky, and light, and morrow.

And then — the view. Oh, then the bird's-eye vision:
the magnificent surround the Almighty abounds —
rivers braided gold, the mountains kneeling,
creation spread past every fence and bound.

How trivial now, the wires, the crumbs, the quarrels,
seen from the height where all the earth is one.
What seemed so large below is barely visible
against the vast handiwork of the sun.

For it is only when you rise, you lift yourself —
the climb itself is what enlarges you.
The heart, once cramped by grievance, opens wide
at altitude, the way horizons do.

And in that widened heart, forgiveness enters —
not forced, but natural as the thinning air.
She does not pardon them to be above them;
she pardons them because, up here, there's air.

The sun lays gold on every beaten feather.
The others could have risen. They chose not to.
But she holds no account against the weather —
she outflew the pain, and forgave the storm that taught her.

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