I was pondering the sad, awful state of America one day when I suddenly remembered an amazing encounter with a pair of Bald Eagles in Alaska. These birds mate for life, and ritually renew their devotion by grabbing each other’s talons in mid-air and tumbling head over head down before releasing and soaring back upward. It is a brief and spectacular sight that I was very lucky to see. Maybe a long poem was born in that moment…
I hear you before you are visible
Your piercing call filling the cove
With your nobility
My heart with a quickening
Then you take flight
White head, golden beak, broad brown wings
Floating high into the sky
Like a dream come alive
Another of you appears
Your mate, your lover
Ascending, tightening circles around each other
Measuring, preparing for a feat of wonder
A barely perceptible flash
Your talons are clasped
Head over head free falling, somersaulting
At the last second … releasing
Two avian parabolas
Rising back up to the sun
Rooted to the ground, spellbound
At the site of perfect trust
Our national bird
Steadfast devotion, unity
So worthy of symbolic status
What must you think, looking at us?
Our unclasped hands, untrusting hearts
Demonizing lies as poison darts
Fractured, divided
Destroying our shared environment
I am the hidden, unbidden guest
Seeing you atop your giant nest
Tearing bits of fish
To feed your giant chick
Corporeal survival is a hard game
We are but flickers of an unknowable flame
The longing to know
Impossible to tame
Wild creatures point us inward
To instinctual honesty
What can be tempered and tamed
With human rationality, creativity
The interior voyage
We eschew with dereliction
Addictions, seductions, collective delusions
Darkness and evil become outward projections
The hero’s quest
To climb up from unconsciousness
Toward awe and wonder
Truth and reverence
In rare dreams, arms extended
We can sometimes fly
Archetypal boundaries dissolve
Into freedom so sublime
We trust the dream magic
Implicit unity with wildness
Yet trust is so illusory
In our collective consciousness
Haumanu Speaks/PoetiCalli 
2 responses to “Perfect Trust”
What a stunning piece, Calli! That opening image of the eagles’ ritual absolutely drew me in – there’s something so powerful about witnessing that moment of absolute trust in free fall. You’ve captured not just the spectacle but the spiritual weight of it.
I’m particularly struck by how you’ve woven together the personal encounter with these broader reflections on America’s fractured state. The line “What must you think, looking at us?” really landed – there’s something both humble and devastating about imagining ourselves through the eagles’ eyes.
But here’s what’s got me thinking: you describe this as “perfect trust” between the eagles, yet later you write about trust being “so illusory in our collective consciousness.” Is the eagles’ trust actually perfect, or is it just that their trust operates in a completely different realm than ours? They’re following ancient instinct, whilst we’re wrestling with consciousness, choice, and all the messy complications of being human.
I’m curious about that tension you’ve set up between “instinctual honesty” and “human rationality, creativity.” Are you suggesting these are fundamentally at odds, or is there a way they might complement each other? The poem seems to yearn for that eagle-like certainty, but perhaps our very capacity for doubt, for questioning, for creating meaning through art like this poem – perhaps that’s not a bug but a feature?
And that final stanza haunts me – the idea that we can access this unity and trust in dreams but struggle with it in waking collective life. What do you think bridges that gap? Is it simply about remembering, or does it require something more radical?
Would love to hear where your mind goes with these threads…
Bob
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Wow!! I’ve never gotten such a long thoughtful comment! Let me think for a while. Yes, I think the eagles’ trust is in a different, biologically instinctual realm, but still has a lot to teach us. With our reflecting consciousness we have to capacity to temper instinctual aggression and anger, but of course we so often fail. Jung once said that “if animals were conscious, they would be far ahead of us because they know how to live by their instincts.” I think consciousness seems to be a very heavy burden for us to bear; people check out of this responsibility in so many ways.
These are a few thought from the top of my tired head, but I’ll keep thinking. great questions!!
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