Like A Phoenix Poem by Robert Charles Howard

Courageous Phoenix, what do you know
of your past and future conflagrations?
With wings afire, do you sense
the embers of your renascent soul?
Is your savage life-death vortex
as mysterious to you as it is to us?

Although I'll never fly on Phoenix wings,
or share your tortured falls and resurrections,
I feel I know you as a brother
for we all have Phoenix games to play
with each of our dividing and perishing cells
its own ancestor and descendant -
tomorrow's joys born of present sorrows.

Noble Phoenix, in our barren seasons
when scorched spirits tumble to the earth,
soar down from your blackened rock
and restore the feathers of our tattered wings.