Eagle and Endless Sky

By Troy Putney

The day I spread my father’s ashes beneath this sequoia. December 12, 2020.

I left you to rest
peacefully amongst giants
sixty-seven hundred feet above the sea,
seventy-six years from your first breath.
Raven ca-cawed your arrival,
buck reverently raised his crown,
and chickadee dee-deed
her spirited song of eternity.
Winter’s wind rippled past 
golden meadow grass,
rolling fog, lifting the veil, 
shifting an ancient cathedral into
a phantasmagoric dance of ancestry —
fog and sentinels,
starlight and mountain shadows,
eagle and endless sky.

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