Wild Gift

For The Sunday Whirl poetry prompt: Wordle #115
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Wild Gift

Rushing across the bridge,
she raced down the lane
toward home, retreating
from hectic unstable world
of work demands that seemed
to move in bends of ever changing,
stranger directions.

Alone, in own space, couldn’t bear
another moment in uniform
she had to wear daily, which now
lies in a heap at her feet, where it
had fallen in her need to pull on
familiar, far more comfortable
clothing.

Then out the back door, up and over
the hill, to the meadow filled with tall
grasses and wildflowers.  She thought
of it as her own secret island, a bit
of heaven she would share with no one
except the rock and the bird.

Reclining in a crevice of the rock,
she sighed deeply, felt her bones
embraced by heat still held in the stone.
Shielded her eyes searching the sky,
and yes, there was the hawk circling
above in slow lazy ease. It seemed
to stoop toward her and something
dropped from its beak, then drifted
down slowly on the gentle current
until it landed softly within her reach.

A feather she would take home,
always treasure for its message
of the wild gift of freedom
that must be nurtured
deep within all living things.

Elizabeth Crawford  6/30/13