Like a bird
on a powerline
I bore the winter's
wind to hang high,
and look down on
those happy people
and await
the crumbs
and hot dog pieces.
I watched them and
began to hate them,
in their two-legged
lowering flight, in their
hollow ways
and irreverence.
And the hot-dogs and crumbs
they made me love them.
I felt a way like maybe they
were not so bad.
And they all aren't!
My wing was broken from
the birthing tree,
and one of these
people
placed me back in the nest
to heal
and try to fly again.
(But many believe that to touch you would alienate you,
and laying soft-bodied on the ground they would
callously pass you by, as if to shun you from memory.)
Sitting lightly on a powerline I
still wait
for the odd
hot-dog or
the new puddles
on the clean
asphalt to
preen and bathe, and I
often decide to leave my
Signpost roost
and spend the night in
the pine trees and bamboo.
There I eat the seeds of grass and the
insects of the night
and I shiver in the wilderness cold
and the feelings
I had for those crumbs and people
fade away
into the hiss of wind
and rattle of
pine needles.
I thank them and forgive them
and may
one day
forsake them.
