Our very life depends on everything’s

Recurring till we answer from within.

       Robert Frost, “Snow”

Seven years now, and early every spring

The eagle returns, gliding to the same old

Oak, settling heavily on the same winter-

Brittle limbs that seem they must break

But never do, come this time in the rain,

Furled feathers glistening, head bowed.

And once again everything seems to enter

Into its gravity and its gravitas, nothing

Moving or making a sound but the rain

And the wind wet in the last few leaves.

It is not hunger that stays its annual hour

Here, twenty miles from its nesting ground

On steep bluffs above the river, and perhaps

It is simply how we each have come to repeat

This passage from one season to the next,

Mine beginning and ending here, the eagle's

Going on to where I cannot go, and I think:

Go back to your high hills, there is nothing

For you here but my love of a beautiful life.