Ornithology #1
Are birds every spring half-starved?
Is hunger just the seasonal
usual to them, the norm:
you go on down to Florida
or thereabouts, you get the sign,
the signal, and off you go
back to Ohio, Illinois,
Wisconsin, and oops,
it’s actually still snowing,
the ground is frozen, and worms - - well,
they’re a ways off yet –
so is this just the typical?
Is there a reason they don’t
lollygag in the South longer?
Maybe people feed them too much
like pigeons at Navy Pier,
incapacitated solely
via instinct, and provision,
so these vacationing Yank birds,
I suppose they suspect they’ll grow
fat and unable to fly, so
off back here they come
to starve,
to survive.
Originally Published: Landscapes, volume 2, issue 3, 2004