Poem: The Birds

*This is a three-part poem. 

The Birds 

I

The birds keep rising from the field, 

They move further in silence. 

I espied several of them reel

Landing the trodden ground behind us. 

Now that the path recovered, 

The dusky clouds restored. 

Their weight is blinding and due

Without the screeches of the few. 

These eyes like green gems in the dark 

Are gliding, veering low with speed. 

Sudden is a chase. Sudden their spark. 

The drifting night is to agree. 

The long tail of winds travel over hills, 

Pinions ripple the air with winter chills. 

I dare say in that long night of ours, 

Some ought to have reached the stars. 

II

The field is open in sight again, 

Out arching woods, night’s silky den. 

The shrubs clot over furrowed land 

Dry as scaled clouds and ice split on sand. 

From the weary eyes of another bird,

Her bed is frozen in her blood. 

And the weary eyes talked her demise, 

Her bleed in winter’s illness. 

On the old veins of the tree

Stand the claws of a new breed, 

Doubtfully watching the new light

Cornered by the fleeing night. 

I see her freeze utterly in the day, 

I hear a flock of her lovers say, 

Hark, watch for the bare-faced crow: 

He watches as we watch her go. 

III

The big birds of the day now come, 

In the many, the few, and the one. 

They take much time to reckon, 

A drizzle-coated land of yester-morn. 

The air is imbued to its fullness, 

Untrimmed winds are the excess, 

Abstract, aggrandizing, and ill. 

The birds sit in bemusement of will. 

The winds that bore them of late, 

Hold steadfast their wind-bound state—

Trickery of a vain parenthood 

Lands on the trampled brood. 

Rue over the shrouding mist, 

Wings against wings turn and twist, 

On the earth they offered warmth 

With bosoms white from birth.