In season 4 of Crossing Jordan in the episode where there is a plane crash a poem is read, know what it is?

Answer 1

The poem that Garrett (Miguel Ferrer) reads goes like this:

as I stand on a mountain top
as the great bird approaches
she is small in my sight
but grows larger on approach
until i am blessed with the full sight
with her graceful wings,
proud countenance and good company
all too quickly she grows small again
on the horizon
and disappears from view
and i call out
"there, she's gone"
but there are other mountaintops beyond me
and at the precise moment when i note the great bird's
departure from my view
i know there are new eyes taking up the sight of her
and fresh voices calling out
"here she comes"




It was probably written by one of the episode's writers (Scott Williams and/or Crossing Jordan creator Tim Kring).

It was actually heavily inspired by a poem by Henry Van Dyke called "Gone From My Sight" or "Parable of Immortality", which talks about a ship rather than a bird, but the similarities are unmistakable:


I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side
spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and
starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty
and strength. I stand and watch her until at length
she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where
the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!"

"Gone where?"

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in
mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and
she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her
destined port.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the
moment when someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!"
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices
ready to take up the glad shout: "Here she comes!"

And that is dying.

Answer 2

No idea.