Notes from Eagle Island by LR Berger

Notes from Eagle Island

(excerpt)

We find what is most urgent
to find in the dream

where you are on your knees
on the beach somewhere behind me

holding up wedges of tumbled sea-glass
as if they were the chipped
points of stars,

worshiping only the light
that passes through them

as I work my way out
to the head of the bluff carrying
nothing but that question—

Who says we’re entitled
to refuge?

Surf smacks the stone face
shattering a clear bottle
into a flume of many-colored pieces.

And, Every loss is not betrayal.

That’s when I let go of the invisible
guardrail, the one I’ve been
gripped to all my life,

edging back with both hands
free to tell you.

L. R. Berger’s collection of poems, The Unexpected Aviary, received the Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry. She has been the grateful recipient of fellowships and support from The National Endowment for the Arts, The New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, The PEN New England Discovery Award, The MacDowell Colony, The Appalachia Poetry Prize, Hedgebrook and The American Academy in Rome. Thanks to a grant cosponsored by The Blue Mountain Center and The NH Audubon Society, and to the generosity of Rachel Carson's family, Berger was afforded time to write at Carson's home in Southport, Maine. Her tribute to Carson was published in, In Praise of Nature, an eco-philosophical anthology (Island Press). Berger also assisted in the English translation from the Arabic of Beginnings a book of poems by Adonis (Pyramid Atlantic Press). Her chapbook, Sightings, was published in 2001 by Oyster River Press. She lives in Contoocook.

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"Notes from Eagle Island" is a cycle of 26 poems from, The Unexpected Aviary by
L.R. Berger (Deerbrook Editions). It is used here with the permission of the poet. All rights reserved.