Wingless

By Jenny Wonderling 05.28.2025

What can my puny form offer 

To those who’ve forgotten

Every child is all our children

For now, only my grief

Through this small open throat

My imperfections

Tears and a warbled song

For the wee ones with their hollowed eyes 

And spines like swollen pearls

Wondering where the humanity of the world has gone

Courtesy of Getty Images

So far from withered olive trees and that paucity

Here I am

In this lush oasis of color and abundant life

Under a steady mountain who tells me 

She only seems to hold up the sky 

Stay steady, she says to me through ancient rock and moss

Stay steady, while the storms rumble past

Be love

And don’t forget: Do what makes you your soul sing

So I pour light off my tongue in the form of sound

Praying in that simple way 

To bring a humble lantern to the dark

In hopes that its glow may spread far and near

Light fed of this valley’s generous bounty

Its verdant leaves and grasses

Peonies flashing heads of crimson and fuschia

While birds prance and flit

Those small winged miracles

Quenching the morning with songs of beauty and celebration

In spite of things

Can you hear them carry hope in their tiny bird throats? 

Through parted beaks

Upon delicate, mighty wings

Beauty enough to drench and nourish this body with their song nectar

And maybe even 

Small, limp children with sticks for limbs 

Whose grandparents with their well-worn hands 

Coaxed ripe olives from fertile fields

Now fallow

Let my voice wend its way into their dreams 

And carry this:

While our songs and feathers may seem different

Some of us cannot unsee, cannot unknow

All I want to do is sing and scream and sing and scream

Sounds so loud and wild they catapult change

I don’t care how anyone else offers their songs to creation–

They deserve clean water and ample nourishment

Oh, how small I feel, with my tiny bird throat

On this perch with its bright flag 

Pretending to sit above the world

May my voice carry magical notes that rain down sanity and compassion 

Pour out rivers of mother-grief to quench all the world’s thirst

Slack-jawed, soft heart, mighty-larynxed, open-formed 

Earth, Mother-Father-Source

Please remind me how to be a channel of your might

Use every cell of me 

To pour out ribbons of luminous sound and love

Upon the children whose blood runs red in whatever land and faith

Enough love to hold all our howls of fury and anguish

And theirs

Until we blanket the world with re-membering

And the antechamber of every heart

(Where wings have been clipped)

Can ache the way it deserves

And tears buried there like stagnant, underground pools

Can finally flow

Here I am

Here you are

And them

Let us pour out our song-prayers and howls–

A torrent

To wash the world 

To help it reawaken

Offering heart-songs for the wee ones with their hallowed eyes 

And spines like swollen pearls

Begging not for food

But an answer

To how the world allows a slow dwindling into nothingness

When there are so many orchards hanging heavy with fruit

+++

(With love and prayers for peace and abundance for all, xo Jenny)

Original song below; have a listen

Lyrics (© Jenny Wonderling 2025):

Hollowed eyes, hungry bellies, child of hers, you are mine

Of withered olive groves and bunkers, my love, your pain is mine

I don’t care to whom you pray, or the color of your skin

What I know is love is love is love

And religion must know kin