Feather

Next time around
I want to be a feather,
guided only by the wind…

My mother told me this
on a night in January
the week before she died.

A few days after her death,
while walking the beach,
I find a stack of bones,
wings crumpled and torn.

One feather catches a breeze,
loosens, lifts, circles
awhile over the frozen lake,
a lighthouse, that narrow blue
ribbon of the winter ferry,

becoming, finally, just a speck
in sun-drenched sky,
where the feather’s stained edges
are washed clean by scalding light.

Sharon Auberle thanks her lucky stars for the opportunity to live and write in two beautiful places – Door County and the Colorado Plateau country. More of her work may be found on her Web site: “Mimi’s Golightly Café” at sharonauberle.blogspot.com.