Osprey Poems

There have been various poems posted on the Loch Garten Osprey threads: here is a new one of mine, to celebrate the fledging of the first youngster on  the Loch Garten nest for 2010--

FLYING IN THE WIND

The gentle morning broke as the sun put out its lissom threads of red and bronze upon the nest-

I felt that today, I was to be as one with this wind which has buffeted  me strongly for days now, and bent our frail bodies to its will.

My brothers tried to move their wings against the skies, but failed to shake themselves from their anchor on the twigs crackling hard beneath our new bright talons.

I raised them, my wings, my reason for being, feeling their feathers soft but brave and powerful, and jumped up, and jumped up again...

I lifted, and felt stronger than before, pushed with my newly strengthened legs, and tried again:  the greedy wind grasped me upwards, and I let it take me up, upwards and above - I was flying at last,  flying so that my breath was almost taken from me in the excitement of flight for the very first time.

As I curved around the nest which had been my only home since I began, I felt with myself the oneness of my being alive, of flying at  long last in Nature's true embrace - I was at Home in the world itself, and nothing could take this from me.