WOUNDED EAGLE’S NEST
BY MIRIAM WAGONER
You are a bit hidden from the road;
many seem oblivious or don’t know you exist.
You stand beautiful, surrounded by towering trees
where eagles meet and rest and soar again.
You are more than a home.
You’re a comforter, a healer, a refuge.
Inside of you, live, the wounded eagles
that can’t (yet) ascend and fly.
Like you, they too are often unnoticed.
Their plight, no one understands.
Just how deep they’re wounded and scarred,
visible or invisible, no one can fathom.
They’re silenced,
their hearts, torn apart,
their spirits, so crushed,
they just survived abuse.
From your window, as I gazed at sun’s reflection,
radiating from calm waters of Twin Lakes,
I see hope, I see freedom, I see future.
I looked into my heart. There lives still — unfading — love.
Amid chaos, pains, terror, oppression, inequities, scorns, unknowns
I love my life, always did and will,
That, and faith — in me and in my God, is why I survived.
I can’t wait to fly again and soar.
• Miriam Wagoner is the first transitioning survivor to live in Kaasei.
Wagoner, who attended the 2016 Seattle Writing Class — Writing for Story and the 2016 Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association Conference, considers this poem her first published piece of creative writing. She is also writing a memoir in hopes her survival experience will help empower other women.
She dedicates this poem to victims and survivors of domestic violence around the world in observance of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, which is October.
*Kaasei is Aiding Women in Abuse and Rape Emergencies (AWARE)’s transitional housing in Juneau.
• To submit to Writers’ Weir, email your poetry, fiction
or creative nonfiction to managing editor Mary Catharine Martin
at maryc.martin@capweek.com.
