The feather

Dear Bird,

I found your feather today on my walk

Lying against the crisp brown late-summer grass.

I wonder:

Did you pluck it purposefully from your skin,

Because it had lost its usefulness?

Or was it torn from your wing in a dispute

With another raptor?

Did it shake loose in a tussle

With your dinner-time prey?

Or did it simply fall unnoticed from your body

As you soared into the sky,

Leaving this small token to land on the earth,

At my feet?

I wonder:

At the colors and patterns the tiny barbs create,

A small part of the larger creature you have become.

The feather lies between my fingers, insubstantial.

It feels like nothing, yet

Hundreds of these lift your body into the blue day

Thousands of feet above, hundreds of miles away

From me

Here on earth

With your feather.