Fortitude

A broken bird, she came to me
gasping for the world that had betrayed her,
for a sky that never had room for her.

Her eyes twitched when I thought they wouldn’t;
they had me convinced that
her wings would follow suit, but they didn’t.
Perhaps they couldn’t.

The brains told me that her case was lost,
that she had gone like the many before her
to the land of the black waterfalls;
I told them that long before had she
visited this dreadful place, and liked it too,
for she is a wanderer and she had been wandering.

No, she did not test the waters like
the many before her;
she trusted them instead.
The impressed current which either swallows or blesses
did what it had not done to the many before her.
Back home, wriggling herself dry
she saw a plant near by suddenly grow
with astonishing poise and pace.

Gone now she was, to this same place,
her mind, and not her wings, helping her to soar.
She would be let to return once more,
unlike the many before her,
who could not be her and she, them.

And I was right for here she is come now,

with strength new and a purpose too.
She tells me that she heard the songs that I
sung as a last resort.
She tells me she will give me, and only me,
an account of the universe she has just been to.

With dignity, she props herself up;
soon she will fly back
to the same sky that never had room for her.
And I will be left, a woman wiser for
she taught me things and I saw for myself why
she was called Fortitude.