Flights In the Gyre of Being

The chick killed its brother; the weak have to be expelled from the nest, It had to be the last and the first, the one still instinctively pecking, still begging from the raw red mouth to endure long enough to soar. She feeds it the meat of its sibling, She has no sorrow for death yet she must blind her eyes to do this thing. It gulps, grows stronger. The consumed brother helping to shed downy floss, to nourish new sleek feathers. Morsels are brought, foreign tastes, until a small bird is put into a gaping beak. It is not an eaglet, the bird was born weak and yet survived until now. Upon a time it is chased from the eyrie, left alone on wilderness winds where only wings that have thrived upon their kin may become mothers.