When a young crane wearies flying North
and his untried wingbeat slows
and he cries for the strength that’s left his body
and he falls towards land unknown
the god in the azure passes the message
to his mother and father and kin
as one they dive to the blue depths below them
and swift a great gyre spins.

They dance out an echo of elders and sing
as they stir up a column of warmth from below,
and the young crane’s body falters to know
it’s the will in the sky that moves his wings.

Fall, weary flyer, and know me at last.
I am the thunder cloud in your down,
I am the hollowness of your feathers,
I am the magnet core of the earth,
I will cast you low to the thrum
that will raise you up to the sun.
Only in falling can a love find you
that can lighten the long journey on.

thanks for Martin Prechtel, for a story from The Wild Rose about the migrations of Sandhill Cranes

Again, I am light with treasures.
Unencumbered by all you place
in the leylines of my palm.

Again, you work me from lump to bowl.
You polish me to mineral glint
until I sit without strain
singing a single melody
of gravity and of wings.

Again, to come close you retreat,
and sudden now this newborn space
for breath, for branch, for root to stretch.

And as my rootlets search for you
and again, I reach to grasp the dark
you summon me to my marrow’s keep
where again, you teach me to cease, and feel
the coil and bend of my fingers arcing,
the twang and buck of my knuckles gripping,
the chapel and pinch pot of my palm cupping,
and how in the dark that here pools and collects
we dissolve the weariness of doing.

‘Now,’ you say, follow the sound of my voice,
descend into the labyrinths of your fingerprints,
amble the rut that your ancestors worked for you,
seek out the lightening treasure they left you.
It is time to stone plummet
into the shuddering smallness
the scientists crow about in love.

And when you need proof, grow smaller.
Whatever visions it takes you to learn to rest
those eyes so heavy with some strange askance
I am here to inlay again and again,
with the unbroken starlight of a cave born thread
the unclaimable midnight of the sky within.