An eagle's nest on the head of an old redwood on one of the
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Precipice-footed ridges
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Above Ventana Creek, that jagged country which nothing but a fallen
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Meteor will ever plow: no horseman
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Will ever ride there, no hunter cross this ridge but the winged ones, no
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One will steal the eggs from this fortress.
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The she-eagle is old, her mate was shot long ago, she is now mated
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With a son of hers.
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When lightning blasted her nest she built it again on the same tree, in
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The splinters of the thunder bolt.
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In a broken shack an old man takes his time about dyin'
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And just at the back a wild flowerbed that he'll lie in
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In dawn's new light a man might venture
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A horse drawn stage from Monterey.
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The she-eagle is older than I: she was here when the fires of eighty-five
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Raged on these ridges,
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She was lately fledged and dared not hunt ahead of them, but ate scorched meat.
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The world has changed in her time; humanity has multiplied,
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But not here; men's hopes and thoughts and customs have changed, their
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Powers are enlarged, their powers and their follies have become fantastic.
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Spilled down the hill a wagon load of bodies lay scattered, shipwrecked at sea.
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Limestone ore is all that mattered.
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They took it from the hills right through the cargo doors
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How many ships have come and gone at Thurso's landing shore?
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The unstable animal never has been changed so rapidly.
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The motor and the plane and the great war have gone over him,
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And Lenin has lived and Jehovah died: while the mother-eagle
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Hunts her same hills, crying the same beautiful and lonely cry
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And is never tired: dreams the same dreams,
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And hears at night the rock-slides rattle and thunder in the
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Throats of these living mountains.
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It is good for man
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To try all changes, progress and corruption, powers, peace and anguish,
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Not to go down the dinosaur's way
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Until all his capacities have been explored: and it is good for him
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To know that his needs and nature are no more changed, in fact, in ten
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Thousand years than the beaks of eagles.
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Of the eagle's plight, we know that nature's balance is undone.
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And it's the birthright of man to unify and live his life as one.
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A whisper of the word will let you soar with your soul.
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California Saga: The Beaks Of Eagles
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| Beach Boys |
