The birds tell a story,
Of what we humans do.
Their chirps and their tweets,
Are confirmation of who and what we knew.

Though we may not see
It, their eyes scan the skies.
And other varieties capture
our uncommunicated idiosyncracies.

The birds in the sky,
Test the temperature of our times.
They hold our secrets,
And much more importantly, our lies.

And so shall I.

She was truly awake
Only when she bled
Her inner demons rattled
Aroused by the deep red tears

Birds caw with hatred as the blood drips from her skin
Circling around as she drops to her knees

Long, sticky tongues brush her cheeks
Thousands of tiny legs
Skittering upwards
Through the fog of her mind

A bird caws from afar
Teasing her
With sounds of a promise
Yet to be broken

Creatures come
Greedily suckling from the corners of her eyes
Crawling across the cracked walls
Of her mind
Clawing to destroy her anguished thoughts

She hears wings flapping
Swooping down
Birds
Speaking to her with cries of mercy
Knowing in death
She would nourish those
She had once destroyed

Pecking, scratching
Ravishing her broken body
Tearing her insides apart

If you looked down
Your eyes might capture  
A speck of new joy
Her soul no longer filled with hate
Devastation torn away

Lonely bones
Free from concern
Lying in wait
For a mouth full of jagged teeth
Perhaps a wolf
To devour her
Finish her off
Whenever he gets the urge

She lies lifeless
Peaceful
Soul cleansed
She is prepared to nourish another
Like never before

A duck floats
On the koi pond
With lily pads.

The buried peanut
Unearthed in the garden
Is full of dirt.

Warm sunlight
With broken clouds
& cold raindrops.

A squirrel runs
With an apple core
In his mouth.

it’s easy to miss the juncos’ slow, sudden departure in spring;
messengers from colder warming worlds

they arrive a dulling autumn:
peppering notations of life in a landscape encased,
each deep dark demitasse
brewed on increasingly tardy dawns
painting a night sky inverted

standing ankle deep in first snows
searching for leftover springs beneath the detritus

but then they finally emerge with the warblers,
orioles, robins, and buntings

and pointillism fades beneath impressionist palettes
that flash over treetops and underbrush

but the last juncos linger:
quiet familiar trills outside my window each morning
disrupting stillness till it disappears

Oh bread crumbs;

The birds have eaten up my path
Their sky has swallowed up my past,
They love to quickly spit it all out

As I shared the deepest parts of myself
With people that held no trust, or love –
Now my past is all they speak about

Now that's foul.

Hole
1.🥚
2.🐣
3.🐓
4.🦃
5.🐔
6.🦆
7.🦤
8.🦉
9.🐧
10.🦩
11.🦋
12.🦜
13.🦚
14.🕊
15.­🦢
16.🐦
17.🦅
18.🐥

Final Score:🪶

A single junco hopping carefree;
pecking stray seed in the snow.
The bird fully embraces the world it knows.
It's tiny heart thumps in gratitude;
for the wondrous discovery of food.

There is a difference between nice and kind;
you will hopefully someday find.
Being nice, you are pleasant and agreeable;
only to make yourself shine
in another's judgemental eye.
If you are kind, you have a deeper level of compassion
for a person's needy cry.

The shuttlecock, served,
Goes over the net.
I'll probably lose
The dollar I bet.

Over the net
It goes back and forth:
It goes north to south,
And it goes south to north.

The birdie in flight
Flits like a sparrow.
She hits it so hard
It darts like an arrow.

I smack it as hard
As I can possibly smack it,
And, wouldn't you know it,
It's stuck in my racquet.