Monday, 13 May 2013

Homing Birds



Homing birds twitter at the end of day
Winding to the tree whence they came.
Fluttering, flapping, dipping as a gay
Group of friends on a dusty road
Trailing home the smell of evening sunlight.

How do they find their way?
Perhaps that one there is lost.
Dragged to a magnet that has held its sway
The last ten thousand years or more.
I see it, upside down, rudderless, absorbing
Each breath of wind under its shivering wings.

I see it alight on a tree, far from home
Amidst an alien green of foreign leaves
Desperate as the blood fades in the aerial dome
That has already changed past recognition.
I see it, a black steadfastness of arrogance,
Unmoving as the conviction of being right.

Perhaps it will spend the night there
Ignorant of the revolution of the world
While it waits a while here.
In the morning, the sky would have changed
For another bird; for this one here
It is lost forever.

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