ONE EAGLE SPEAKS

I wish I were a peafowl
the loveliest in the garden
greener, more feathery
than mimosa leaves, more turquoise
than eyes from the north,
more curved than a neck.

Alas, I am but
half-goddess/half-raptor,
or so it is said,
which serves to explain
why I am left strong and free
to traverse thousands of miles
swoop down from mountains
soar high into them
always going toward Delphi
earth's source
umbilical to the mother
magnet that holds
my flight's single path.

I stop for winter only.

Anne Harding Woodworth's poetry has appeared in numerous publications nationally and regionally in the Washington, D.C. area, where she lives with her husband and with her Black Lab. 

She is a member of the Folger Shakespeare Library's Poetry Board. She grew up in New Jersey and upstate New York. She lived in Athens for four years, where her first poetry book, Guide to Greece and Back, was published (Lycabettus Press). She has drawn on her Athens experience for Aesop's Eagles. 

She and her husband travel extensively in search of ancient sites. In Italy they explore classical ruins and the enigmatic, almost forgotten "sacred mounts" ("A Walk in Italy"). 

The poem, "Soccer Fields Near Padua," is the result of a visit to Italy where Harding Woodworth's son was playing professional soccer in the Italian first division. Her other son is a writer in Boston.

THE OTHER EAGLE SPEAKS

The storyteller found me
caught in the resin of a pinetree
at the beach.
I called to him,
"Aesop, get me out of this mess!"
He flew up, like a bird,
ugly old crow that he was,
and freed me,

saying, "Eagles find eagles."
I flapped my wings,
for what he said was true.
I myself was being inexplicably pulled
toward the eagle of my life.
She would meet me at Delphi.

"And," he added
with an odd glint in his dim eyes,
"pinenuts find pinenuts."
So he stayed in the tree
eating pinenuts
until sleep overcame him
on the decayed limb he'd chosen.

I owed him rescue, that I knew.
But what was happening?
Was I a character
in one of his harebrained stories?
"Holy Zeus," I muttered, "I can't be delayed.
The end will go all wrong."

But I flew up and
with strength greater than I knew I had
grabbed the two pouches off the old coot.
He awoke with a start,
crawled down the trunk of the tree to safety
just as the limb exploded
in rotten pulverization.
"My pouches," he cried out,
oblivious to his good luck.
"Give them to me, ingrate.
I need them for balance."

I tried to pick them up,
but gone was the uncanny might
that comes with emergency.
This time I could lift only one,
which happened to be red.

"Wear your flaws in front," I said,
lowering the pouch to his chest.
Then with the world's imperfections
in my talons
I flew over the sea,
dropped them in to merge with flotsam
and soared on toward
the perfect end.

THE WALK

When you're hurting,
take your shoes off,
turn them upside down,
spill out the day.
Comfort floods you in evening like lamplight,
when you look
at where you've been.

Seeds from the pasture
land on the rug;
grass moist of the hay-mellow barn,
where you went for the warmth of animals touching.
And this, almost too small to see,
one stone
from under one toe.

Is that what caused the pain,
this fossil-grit from the red shale creek
that reminds you of crossing over,
limping, from water to land
like the fish with legs,
estranged, cold
and having to breathe
in a way the others don't?

CRATEWRIGHT

Mr. Rosen makes crates,
enters them, he tells us,
to feel roughness from within.
Wondrous, he says, this activity
of self-containment.
He smells edges of pine forests
where insects heave eggs in bark
and buzz in circles crazy
over being sure of what's to come.

Mr. Rosen ships himself in crates
to turquoise Zanzibar-like places
where he snorkels among fish
and odd-shaped plankton,
which he could feed on
if need be
in the belly of an animal.
He laughs sometimes at being without a doubt.

Even if it's 3 in the morning,
and, crated, he lies at rest
in an unlit delivery van
in an unlit garage of a hundred brown trucks
in all the sleeping sunless world,
even then he is content.
Undelivery, he says, prolongs usefulness,
and his words stay close
for a little more time.

PAINTED BRIDE QUARTERLY

BLACK BEAR REVIEW

The Conservatory of American Letters