For the Birds
It could be verse or adversity depending on where you sit. What say you?
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So here we refreshingly roost having flown the coop,
that sheltering home with its ranks of nests
where we laid tales tall and short, thick and thin
brooding over them til they hatched and took flight.
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So here we have flocked to scratch stories in electric
gravel from our roost in a high-rise tower of suites,
remembering, recalling, speaking of times and places,
decorating our living space with self portraits.
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Here we lodge, reflecting daylight to limn who we are
to whomever may catch our beams, but what of them and
their circumstances? Are their heart’s desires in our ken?
Do we see them? Could we bear them? What moves them?
We like to suppose that they are like us and will
understand our special revelations and be uplifted,
but suppose they are not…
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Our heartfelt memoirs and lyrical evocations of heatwaves and
hayrides, adversities and angst, will they succor them?
Should we not sometimes gaze on the harsh landscape below
our tower to paint what we see needs to change in it and us,
not just what we did or remember or wish to behold?
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Do we admit to our hearts only our own or can we open
them to the homeless, hungry, shunned, and oppressed by
wickedness rooted in too much regard for wealth and power
and ask one another what must change for this to end?
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Surely we should do all these things and more, and can
if we lift our gaze to what lies below below our tower.
What we find out there may not be beauty, but grim truths
and the enduring dignity of those forced to suffer;
their stories and those of who ruin lives must be told.
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This is our humanity too, these other hearts that beat as ours
and to which we are unwittingly, inescapably bound.
