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Taunja Thomson’s poetry has most recently appeared in Surreal Poetics and Masque and Spectacle. Two of her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Awards: “Seahorse and Moon,” in 2005, and “I Walked Out in January,” in 2016. She has also co-authored a chapbook of ekphrastic poetry which has recently been accepted for publication. A worshiper of nature, Taunja’s summers are filled with water gardening, and her winters are spent obsessively feeding the birds and other wildlife that appear in her one-acre slice of heaven – a field.

Alighting

by Taunja Thomson

I am half eagle
straining against my roots.
My knees caress earth
the bones grow
like stems stained yellow—
I bend around them
as brown feathers break
my shoulders.
My hair is a jagged halo
of trees
like the halo around your head;
I see it with my eyes closed.
We are two globes
two polar opposites
inversions of one another
mirror and magnet
soul and bone.
Nothing—sleet sun monsoon—
can change that.
Rooted in hell we fly
the way of heaven
all the while sinking
to the true world
alighting finally
on ourselves.

More of Taunja’s work can be found at her Facebook, writer’s page. 

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