"Eagles" at school

My poem "Eagles," which won first place in the rhymed poetry category of the November HACWN contest, is going to school today.

A friend from the HACWN conference loved the poem, showed it to her son, who is studying poetry in his fifth-grade class at school. He liked it, and she asked permission for him to share it with his class. She writes that the teacher is very excited to read it to the class.

So today a fifth-grade class in Missouri will be hearing and discussing the following poem:

As Eagles Fly

In icy skies an eagle flies
above the frozen, leaden lake
and running river where it lies
like liquid crystal as it makes
a sparkling, open pathway sliced
between glazed banks of layered ice.

With shining head and tail spread white,
the eagle straightens eight-foot wings
in soaring, slow, majestic flight.
Not ruled by frail and earthbound kings,
he soars past grasp of naked tree,
a symbol of the bold and free.

The river ripples over stones;
its motion keeps it running free
from icy blue of frozen bones.
Soft light’s reflected brilliantly
on brow of river’s fluid face
and shimmers in its icy lace.

Secure in steel cocoon I pass
as vision blurs discerning truth
of crystal river’s rippling glass.
Obscured by fading vinyl roof,
my sight’s on traffic whizzing by,
while in the sky the eagles fly.

© Glenda Mathes