‘To Be a Bird’ and Other Poetry by Rowena Hammill

To Be a Bird

To foil the grab of gravity,
To sail across the spaces
Engendered by the cavity
Between the mountain faces.

To laugh at man’s ineptitude,
His crawling, earthbound gait.
To wing in silent solitude
And at the summit wait

While human snail ascends in pain.
To flee before he spies
How, effortless, you rise again
To ever purer skies.

Autumn

Farewell to heady summer’s hazy days,
The riotous hue that garden grew is gone.
The harvest moon hangs fully in her blaze
Of creamy luminescence, daring Dawn
To usher in the ever‐weak’ning Sun,
His time‐locks shorn, a feeble Samson’s curse,
Oft‐clouded as he makes his daily run
Or crawl, more like, across his short traverse.
But with the smaller days comes welcome change.
The rains bring green to parched and splintered earth,
New blue to stream and white to mountain range,
While plants retreat and plan for next rebirth.
One final aspect sets the fall apart‐
God’s sunstruck leaves break open wide the heart!

Rowena Hammill is a poet, cellist, and mother living in Vashon, WA.

These poems are among the entries for the Society of Classical Poets’ 2012 Poetry Competition.

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