Feather

High in the noon's bright bowl of blue

I saw an idling eagle tilt

His suave white wings. As smooth he flew

As water flows on silt.

Lew Sarett

He wheeled; a feather from his wing

Fluttered from out the clean clear dome

And sank on the grassy carpeting,

Soft as a moth on foam.

In the eerie hour before the dawn,

I heard, out of the starry height,

The gentle ghost of one long gone

Whisper across the night.

The tender fragment of a call

Fell soft as the down of any bird.

And none but I saw the feather fall;

And no man caught the word.