Poems by Wendy Williams
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Winged Victory
by Wendy Williams
From Canary Spring 2014
Wendy lives close to the American River in northern California about two miles from Lake Natoma. The pelicans in the poem were flying north over Salt Point on the Pacific coast.
(a tribute to Rachel Carson, author of the book Silent Spring (1962), which exposed the dangers of DDT, among them the weakening of pelican egg shells)
How glad you would be
to see this
long line
of pelicans
one behind the other
skimming the ocean
their shadows
black mirrors
beneath
pelicans
arrowing
across the sky
in a long loose V
a front of pelicans
galloping toward me
over the plain of sky
fifty fliers
pumping wings
muscling their weight
into wind
one bird
trailed by
three fledglings
flapping wildly
to keep up
string after string
of birds
whose eggs
now hold
hatching
into wings
of wild
© Wendy Williams