The Eagle: A Saturday Poem

The Eagle

Remember the paddle-boat and the eagle?
Some people might call it serendipity.
Not me. I call it a memory.
Ours, and no-one else’s.
Serendipity seems to happen to other people, too.
And I don’t like that.
What I mean is I don’t like the equation the word
implies.
As though one experience is as good as another.
Theirs, as ours.

We rented that contraption, not someone else.
We did.
We commandeered the bastard. “Paddled” it.
Got out there and floated.
My Huxley’s “Island” and your I know not what!
But we read, and drifted. Until the thing appeared.
Magnificent as ten kings of Jericho.
I would have capsized the both of us but for your
wise counterbalance.

Leaning out, I wanted to touch the creature
standing taller than eight likenesses of itself.
Gripping that branch, and my heart, before both
things bounced and tossed as thrown about
by the waves I made, ascended
as you, laughing, laughed.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2009