Wingspan

The other day I looked back at a poem I wrote a while ago and re-worked it a bit....

Wingspan

Oh glory what can gather

in the wingspan of my voice…

the bite of a color, 

a wide-sky ache of longing, 

the song inside a stone.

These wings, my voice-

oh the pleasure 

when it flies,

when it smooths and when it

pauses; when it rises;

when it follows a sonnet’s contours,

when it wails and when it laughs;

when it is freed on the power

of a spiritual truth and wakes

the word from the page

and conforms to it, tastes

the story and speaks the feast;

These wings, my voice.

Oh, what I do not yet know, 

what I consider in awe and curiosity,

is how far this voice

can stretch.

I want to use these wings until

at day’s end they are weary

and can go no further.

I want to feel

syllables of life upon my feathers

and be able to describe how they catch, 

how they lift, how they weigh, 

how they waken the fireflies 

when they skim past at dusk-hour.

Kimberly M. King, RSCJ