On the Wing

I’ve always envied
how they hang there in the sky
tugged by the wind
as a dog on a leash
as a child by the hand
set on peering down from
that spot and no other
then folding wings to drop
to drop with no fear
to drop as if the whole
rest of the universe has stopped
in that moment to wait
to watch what happens next
to drop into still waters
or the troughs between waves
or behind that hill or tree
to rise again
wings fully spread
engaged with air that
no longer seems empty
into a sky that is somehow less 
without that winged hunter



- Russell Willis


Russell Willis emerged as a poet in 2019 with the publication of three poems in The Write Launch. In 2022 he won the Sapphire Prize in Poetry in the Jewels in the Queen’s Crown Contest (Sweetycat Press). Russell has published poetry in over thirty online and print journals and twenty print anthologies. He grew up in and around Texas (the home of bluebonnet fields that stretch to the horizon) and was vocationally scattered as an engineer, ethicist, college/university teacher and administrator, and Internet education entrepreneur throughout the Southwest and Great Plains, finally settling in Vermont (with its Winter-defying crocuses) with his wife, Dawn. Russell’s website is https://REWillisWrites.com