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Think of the blackpoll warbler.
She tips the scales
at one ounce
before she migrates, taking off
from the seacoast to our east
flying higher and higher
ascending two or three miles
during her eighty hours of flight
until she lands,
in Tobago,
north of Venezuela
three days older,
and weighing half as much.
She flies over open ocean almost the whole way.
Oh she is not so different from us.
The arc of our lives is a mystery too.
We do not understand,
we cannot see
what guides us on our way:
that longing that pulls us toward light.
Not knowing, we fly onward
hearing the dull roar of the waves below.
First published in DreamSeeker Magazine (Summer 2009).
Used with the author’s permission.
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Julie Cadwallader-Staub grew up in Minnesota with five sisters, her parents and a dog, beside one of that state’s small lakes. Her favorite words to hear growing up were, “Now you girls go outside and play.” She now lives in Vermont and still loves to explore the natural world out her back door. Julie's poems have been published in several journals and magazines, and included in anthologies such as The Cancer Poetry Project. She was awarded a Vermont Council on the Arts grant for poetry in 2001 and won an Honorable Mention in the Muriel Comstock Bailey contest in 2003. Her first collection of poems, Face to Face, will be published by Cascadia Press next year. Says Julie, "I bought a book about 10 years ago -- A Poem A Day -- that re-kindled my great love of poetry and encouraged me to get serious about it.”
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