For The Birds

It is for the birds I climb the fully extended ladder hoping my son can break my fall should I lose my balance. The wing-ed ones which God said are under His care. The sparrows which worry not, but flit around, plucking and chattering, waking me before the set alarm.

“Bring in the birds, Lord, so I remember Your grace. So I can ease off the hustle of life and know Your love and forgiveness is worth more than tuppence, yet a tuppence of faith is all that You ask.

When Your grace flies into view today, I will thank You.

Birds of Pray. May our prayers take wing and perch in the heavens.

On top of the pines

they speak in tongues

and redress a cycling of days.

They walk upon the sky

and intersect with wings

aflame by the sun.

It is an aviary of prayer

of limitless tone.

I am not alone.

 

The field is an amphitheater

catching and throwing

the sounds of mourning.

A duet of doves seize the day.

Carpe diem tweaks the dew

and lifts redemption again.

The blackbird’s night song

fades into light.

Birds over Computer Fan

The rite of spring is singing louder.

Louder than my computer fan.

The blue jays are shouting.

The robins are talking over the fence.

The sparrows and chickadees are speed dialing.

 

This is the first spring in the country.

The window is cupped open.

My ears are too,

and the sounds send me back

 

to a dead end street of so much traffic.

Starlings would bounce from shrub to shrub.

Plump orange bellies would bow and pull up breakfast.

 

I could almost hear baby-blue

eggs cracking.

 

Oh how I miss my mother brooding over us.

 

 

© Gerald Allen Barrett and parentheticallyspeakingin3d, 2012.

>The Birds

>

The window was open a bit,
like parted lips, and from its
mouth came songs to interrupt
my dreams.
It was more than interruption.
It was an integration of
of mixed language and trills
and dreamscape.
As if Hitchcock put sub-titles
underneath their chirps and
squawks and whistles and
a foreign film rolled on.
The robins and the grackles
sub-titles started wriggling
under them like worms
in the dirt.
 
“You know Grack, why is it
we have wings and we are
sent to the soil to get
breakfast?”
“I have, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve
gotten that conversation
 reeling in my brain too.
Robin, oh, if I were a bird
I would fly away from here.”
“Sometimes I pretend I am
a rabbit…hopping down here
from worm hole to worm
hole.”
“ I I I feel the earth move
under my my my feet, I
feel the sky tumbling down,
a tumbling down.”
“Hey, get real, that’s
groceries you’re hoppin’
past friend.  Let’s see a
little neck action over there!”
“Now, now, don’t you you you
get a little feather bent over
feeding your little ones
second hand goods.  I mean
worms are are are gross
enough the first time.”
“Not the huge earth worms,
hey watch this…”
It was then I started to wake
when I saw the big
orange breast dip and
yank an earth worm like
scarves from a sleeve.
Pulling and pulling and
pulling a gewy dirt soil
freckled beast and sucked
it in like linguini.  The robin
stood among the blades
perfectly still for 13 seconds
and then cast the worm
out. 
And there it lay, divided in
three equal sections
by square knots.
The robin said nothing,
jutted out it’s chest
and nodded and
ascended like a
harrier for a moment,
and then flew away.
The grackle stood 
with its beak hanging open.
“Well,  I’ll, I’ll, I’ll be.”


Posted for one shot where poets do their poeting.