Collected poems by Vachel Lindsay :: :: University of Virginia Library

My child is like a bird's wing, a bird's wing, a bird's wing.
Slender like a bird's wing, curving like a bird's wing.
Her bones like those that leap and fling,
And make the quick bird's wing,
An elegant
And slender
Fairy-fashionplate design,
Plumed like a bird's wing, steel strong, but very tender,
Every curve of life to render.

And her motion, like a bird's wing, cutting higher,
She spreads above my sky,
A noble, an immortal thing,
A phœnix-wing of fire.

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She spreads above my sky
An aurora and a sign,
An elegant and slender fairy-fashionplate design.

And then we are timid,
And infinitely small,
Two children playing house
In a pine tree tall.
Or she is then a wren's wing
Hiding a small-boy wren,
Or I am hidden like a hope, tied with a cob-web rope,
Beneath a humming bird's wing, a bird's wing, a bird's wing,
And then she is an eagle's wing, a hawk's wing, a Greek god's wing,
Teaching me, her son, to fly where tremendous stars sing.

But I have never gone through clouds that hide her everywhere,
Have only seen one wing emerge from fog or sea or cloudy air,
Her eyes,
Like the fixed eyes
On the butterfly's or pheasant's wing.

I have never seen her young soul's face,
Her hidden eyes, and the other wing,
I have never heard the word of grace
My hawk will cry, my swallow sing.

I have only seen the left wing,
One fair, emerging bird's wing.

My child is like a bird's wing, a bird's wing, a bird's wing,
A dreamy wing, a lone wing.