Athene's Bird - The Sign Poem by Tracey Hardie

Athene's Bird
The Sign

Scarring the olive tree’s bared limb
I perched
rooting eight ivory talons
in feckless foliage from an early spring.

Sunrays reach in demising night
watching gilded eyes
resting on her sight,
a goddess reaching
towards bellowing clouds
that hazed the sun to silence.

A stirring breeze commands
my cryptic wings
to fly like a slave, tethered,
landing gently upon her frame
as if the winds caressed her skin.

In a moment of stillness,
a stream is heard
babbling to stones on its journey
to a place I’ve never been,
where soldiers search the skies
for my flight,

the sign of victory.