Jamail Center for Legal Research
Tarlton Law Library

"It's All Been Done Before"

Sutherland
invested in pens
 and shut himself away from anyone
hermit of Hale Hill
writing.

Five years he toiled.
The old men wept and rarely slept
while answering the sibilant urgings
of his Muse.

He cut cliches
and tore with sawtoothed metaphors
into the night of Newness--
then on his ninetieth birthday
he left his humble hutch
and hobbled with his package to the town.

He lodged in a dim hotel
and every day, full of expectation,
begged like an eager pup at the postal station.

And the letter came. He drank the words
and died.

Eagles

Where God forgot
to finish rolling pastry
leaving mounds of half recumbent dough
at the edge of prairie vastness
there we among the rugged
rocks
of undulating foothills
and barely-crinolined cliffs
performed the elemental rituals
of peace, of war, of love.

So high were we
that eagles soared below us
two golden birds
silhouetted against the sky.

They touched by glimpse and glance
determining through closer scrutiny
our own relentless drift
and we
as mortals never to be imbued with wings
marveled at their aery freedom.

They accepted us
not as intruders visiting unheralded their mountain rise
but as beings who, chained to the earth, had made a
compromise
by climbing to their height 'spite snow and cliffs.

We basked in their affection
 they in ours
until, two thumbnails etched against the sinking sun
they veered and started home again
to eyrie on a distant crag
where another form of love
was born.

The Day We Flew with Eagles

No longer bonded to earth
we flew to the edge of being
resonant with song
encompassing sphere on sphere
mountains that in another world
would have housed the gods.

We camped facing sun
with jackpines as a windbreak
and all the valley before us
stretched in an arced expanse
to further mount.

Far overhead two eagles circled
and by some cosmic force
beyond our ken
we too flew
flew
flew from the centre
borrowing the soulwings of eagles
to rise aloft beyond the alpine treeline
and frigid peaks
then for hours unending
spiraled
danced
dipped
and
dove
focusing on each other
as we soared.
We were eagles
released
spiraling to a zenith
of four dimensions
perceived in mindless euphoria as one--
arcing in triumph, taunting sun!

Undaunted by melting wax we rose to sniff the stars
and in a final ecstatic burst
touched the solar sphere.

It seared our mystic feathers
and left us screaming in pain
delight! before the stoop!

Even our plummeting itself was

timeless

out of time

a free fall

from one place
to another

a graceful
exhausted
triumphant
jubilant
plunge

yet we oblivious even of the blissful blending
of air and earth, of wakefulness and sleep.

The other eagles circle
crying not in pain
as they touch the distant sun.

Lodged on a ledge
we slept in a makeshift eyrie
at the edge of cliffs
savouring the air of altitude
and only later shifted
slithering down banks of shale
short cut from heaven
to the trail below
taking with us souvenirs
of weathered wood
sprigs of cranberries
a feather
and memories of
the day we flew with eagles.