Walking Flight

Some fifteen-- or was it eighteen?-- years ago, my friend Jane returned from a peace corps stint in Nepal with a present: this walking stick which one of the Nepali in her "home village" had carved out of smoked wood for her. She'd used it on trips across the mountains while she was there; I believe she once forded a raging river at the height of a storm using it to aid her footing.

There's a crested bird at the topmost end of the walking stick-- reminder of how we long for flight, even as we walk in groundedness. And all that we push ahead of us, stolid as earthmovers-- all that too can change in the flick of an instant.

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Here is "Morning Lyric", my poem yesterday on Via Negativa;and "Senas", today's poem.