A MARRIAGE OF EAGLES

by stella graham-landau 

From Nest to Deathbed, Jackie the Eagle Entranced California and Beyond. The bald eagle and her mate gained fame during the pandemic, as a livestream tracked their nesting attempts. She died while being treated for anemia. —The New York Times, August 10, 2026

mated for years

jackie is larger than shadow 
her compadre of the skies 
both hardwired to protect 
each egg each feathered chick
perhaps they met in a playground of clouds 
an accidental encounter 
not paired by families imagining 
a coupling worthy of majesty 
they soar
own the sky 
build aeries in the tops of giant trees
relying on architectural instinct
carried in their bones
jackie 
an unpretentious name 
for a mother 
tasked to save her species
eons of ancestral instructions
to keep eagles aloft

build a nest
mate
lay eggs
hatch
fledge 

repeat

stella graham-landau is a poet in richmond va. she has been published on the new verse news and other journals, websites, and anthologies. she loves the generous community of poets she has found online and welcomes conversations with other creators.

SHE KNOWS HOW TO MAKE A U-TURN

by Beth Fox

Photo by Kevin Bermingham at Dreamstime.

She’s black, she’s white—
she’s a white-throated swift
moving so quickly I barely see
the male on her back as 
she barrels toward earth
in a courtship spin—
swerving at the point 
of impact, then 
hurtling upward 
again to become 
a speck in the sky.
(Black and white,
           dark and light—)
The nest—
a cup of moss and twigs
glued to the side of a sheer cliff
with saliva.
 
(I was once convinced
    that dark news 
          was really light—)
Fifty trips a day to care for chicks, 
feeding them balls of insects… instincts
as true as their flight.
 
Before dark times, I could tell
black from white… I will again, when
I can see through these reddened eyes…
    Will I/will we turn back in time   
          to see
     the brilliant blue sky?


A lover of the outdoors, Beth Fox was a finalist in four New England poetry contests and is widely published in New England. She helped seniors publish their work in an anthology, Other Voices, Other Lives. Her chapbook Reaching for the Nightingale is available at Finishing Line Press. Beth lives in Wolfeboro, NH.

THE INNER LIFE OF A HENCHMAN

by Michael Brockley

Photo by Amy Volovski at Birds&Blooms.

The cardinals nesting in the barberry bush beneath my bedroom window work together as if they have fledged many chicks during their brief lives. The mother, dusty brown and patient, approaches her chicks through aerial feints. And by hopping from lower branches to the upper fork where the hatchlings await the spiders and crickets she delivers. The scarlet male darts and barrel rolls toward its forage with what I pretend is pride. 

Soldiers were once children in such a hurry to fly. I was such a boy aiming toy bazookas and sniper rifles at Lincoln Log forts under siege. Now I celebrate the appetites of five hungry gullets, hoping the chicks survive the neighbor cat’s overnight prowls. If I can’t protect the spring’s latest brood, how can I save the children of Jerusalem and Rafah.

Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His poems have appeared in The Parliament Literary Journal, Stormwash: Environmental Poems, and Barstow and Grand. Poems are forthcoming in Of Rust and Glass, Ryder Magazine, Otherwise Elsewhere Literature and Arts Journal, and The Prose Poem.