I is for Impossible and It's Not How You Start

This is the Interesting, Illustrious and Important Illuminating beyond belief A-to-Z April 2015 Challenge!!!!  And I am an A to Z Participant.  And it is Day 9, Letter I!

Again this year I am writing a poem a day to celebrate National Poetry Month.  It's my FOURTH YEAR in a ROW of writing a poem a day for the A to Z Challenge. My theme this year, is signs I've photographed and poems to go with them.

It is also a posting for Poetry Friday at Laura Purdie Salas' Writing the Word for Kids, a DigiPoetry offering and for Poetry Jam.

This Tuesday, April 6, in the early afternoon, the first osprey returned to the nest on Route 1 in Bath, Maine.  He/she? was so regal sitting up beside the huge nest on the power lines separating the north and south bound lanes.  I look for their return every year.  One year they were back on April 2, but this year, with the snow still mostly covering the ground and ice still on much of the water, I wondered if they would be late.  What they do would seem impossible, but they do it every year, like clockwork without a clock.  In some respects this sign is as much about them as the second poem here.  They start their trips in different places, arriving here within a day or two of each other.  Their distances are different, the weather patterns different, but they end up in the right spot every time!

It's where you end up

that says that you win;

It doesn't much matter

just where you begin.

Some roads are longer

and some roads are rough,

But work through the hardships

when the going gets tough.

Set a good pace, get

your goal in your sights;

Don't waver and wander,

no lefts turns or rights.

Though you may have started

behind all the pack,

Forge a path straight ahead

and never look back.

No it's not where you start

that determines your fate;

It's more how you handle

what's served on your plate.

©Donna JT Smith, 2015

-----------------For Poetry Jam this week - the theme: Impossible Worlds------------------

Impossible World

The ospreys' nest stands cold,
   Piled with winter snow
     A stick bed settling down
       Making a flatter surface
          Than a summertime nest

Come spring,
   come spring,
     and melt away the snow -
 But the ospreys come home
   before the snow can go

They were each in different places:
   Florida, Cuba, Jamaica,
      Puerto Rico, South America -
         First one.  Then the other.

The pair winter apart
   and return within days
      of each other
         to the same nest year,
         after year,
         after year

Raising one,
   two or
      sometimes three young
To continue
   this impossible ritual
      leaving and returning
         to their same partner.

They find fresh sticks
   for the nursery
      and "fluff it up"
         with pointy twigs tucked,
Before starting
   their new family.

How do they know -
   how to build a nest
      to weather storms,
      to shelter
         eggs and young?

How do they know
   it is time
      to come home?

How do they know
   it is time
      to go their separate ways?

How do they know
   where to go
      and where it is
         in this big world?

It is impossible to tell.
It is impossible for me to do all
   they seem to find possible to do
      without a level,
      a calendar,
      a watch,
      a GPS,
      a car...and an airplane -

Yet, all they have
   is themselves.

Maybe all we need is to
   carry an osprey with us;

But I guess
   that would
      REALLY be
         impossible!

©Donna JT Smith, 2015