30 Poems in 30 Days

April 17

(Prompt: “to write a ‘social media’-style poem. Namecheck all of your friends. Quote from their texts, tweets, FB status updates, twitter accounts, and blogposts”)
***

Something else instead

The question today is, If not social media, then what?

Well,
I could write about Rosie and the time she was a baby bird who died while cradled in my hands. How life fluttered away, lighter than a breath, and her little head dropped gently down onto my fingers.  It explains some things.  How her spirit is so faint it barely occupies the dog she is today.  How she draws her energy from me as if she ran on solar batteries and I was the sun and how, if I forget to shine on her, she forgets to eat and drink and poop.  And live.  How her eyes have gone blind, her teeth crumbled in her jaw (does it believe itself a beak?)  How her little body, after just 4 years, is old because, small though it is, it’s too big for her tiny engine.

And how, strangely, she sometimes looks like a chicken.

Yes, I could write about that. How her shy little soul is climbing up the ladder, heading for great things.

Or I could write about the urn of garlic, elegant there in the sun, it’s graceful, fragile spikes completely still in the absence of even the tiniest puff of wind.

Or I could write about the devotees of the religion of peace, whose devotion manifests worldwide as they blow bodies to pieces and throw Christians overboard into the sea and crucify children, but only on the days when their (basically peaceful) zeal takes leave of their (basically peaceful) senses, making them forget how much those children are worth on the open market.

No?

Ok then.  I’ll tell you about the crows, carrying on out there, as crows do.  They have meetings several times each day in the tall trees, not needing media to socialize or communicate or encourage them to believe themselves owls or swans or eagles.  The only wires they depend upon are those on which they sometimes sit.

The crows meet in the treetops
Every morning, sun or rain
And once again each evening,
But mainly to complain.

In the morning they sound hopeful
As they plan the day’s agenda,
But in evening they are grouchy
As the day reaches its enda.

There’s a poem for you guys.

***