I saw with my heart

In a summertime dream

Something beautiful, awesome and pure:

Two eagles, mid-air

Above a clear lake

Flying wingtips together and sure.

Dipping low, soaring high

With effortless skill

They blended with rapturous ease.

Like love on gold wings

They flew in the light

Just skimming the loftiest trees.

Can something so wild,

So fluid and free,

Be a part of this life here below?

Must we watch with our hearts

Yet be tethered, in fact—

Only agony-ecstasy know?

Soaring up to the Light

Our spirits are loosed—

All encumbrance of circumstance gone.

High gliding and chaste,

Suspended and free,

Our flight is rapturously long.

Oh God, make a nest

In the loftiest trees

For these eagle-like spirits of ours.

No more can we rest

Far down on the earth

So filled with its languid tomorrows.

—Patricia Henderson Struntz, 1982