Poem: Thank You to the Birds

Perched on a wire, a feathered ornament prettifying

the blight of power lines

graphing the sky with staves

and you’re the notes.

La-la-la…and a little higher

Laah!

Yah, hah, how you make me la-la-la,

How you make me laugh

With something like childlike, childish, altogether foolish

Joy joy. Oh, joy. That kind.

Thank you, I’ll say it directly. Thank you! I say thank you, plainly.

In a language that every living thing can understand,

and maybe the dead ones, too. The universal being universal.

Thank you, birds. For everything, the parts you can’t understand and the parts I don’t understand and

The parts that everyone understands.

Thank you for all that. And thank you for the smaller mercies, the ones I’m certain

You haven’t planned, unless, in fact, it’s true

that in your avian breast is where

God dwells.

Thank you, God. I’m grateful that you’ve perched upon my composition,

Keeping an eye on the Eden you aerate and fertilize

with the divine obliviousness redolent of eternal grace. Omniscience doesn’t fret.

Make a bet, hurl a threat, compromise the morals of a passionate coquette.

God is cool. And so are you. Ergo…

Here’s a secret that maybe you always knew:

The seed I furnish and the flowers I grow and the stale bread

Slung backhand like a Frisbee to the distant precincts of our little garden sanctuary park –

It’s allegedly for you, Mr. God Sparrow Warbler Wren Dove Towhee Finch Phoebe,

But here’s the secret part:

It’s also for me and all the other earthbound Godheads

Who seek a chirping singing shouting cooing

Confirmation that you really do exist.