I sing the body electric . . .

   Walt Whitman

Past a church quiet between services,

The faithful my mother called Holy Rollers,

Next to this old country road made new

And unnecessary, a leaning power pole

No longer connects to anything, lightning

Having sheared away the top and wires,

Leaving one cock-eyed cross-brace, Biblical

Too in its way, when here then was only

The way past farms and fields, and perhaps

Only I ever notice now the ivy covering

The pole, climbing to its top and beyond,

Where an eagle perches in a blue wave of

Heat shimmer and sparks of light, leaning  

Into the air, neither falling nor yet flying

But poised there in the space between,

Considering a moment a leap of faith,

Then slipping just a little down until,

With a single shudder of its slow wings,

Its white and brown feathers motionless

And spread, skimming the air currents,

The invisible wires of the wind, it soars

Into the communion of its life and mine,

Its cry of hunger the only song it knows.