A nest of intricate design
A piece of art unmatched in decor
Amid the dark verdure
Of needle like leaves
The gay habitat of a swallow and her brood.

How suddenly it erupts into a clatter of sounds,
As the mother bird comes diving in
With a wee bit of a wriggling worm
Discreetly borne in her tiny beak.

Thrusting it into the gaping mouths
She departs and comes again
And again comes with something
A whirring insect or a twisting thing.
Nothing can appease her ravenous horde
And on she goes ferreting about.

At night fall she alights abrupt
From what infinite heights, God alone knows
Darting into her nest as she hovers,
The din subsides............
First into a fizzle, then into sharp silence

Bundled in her warmth, the little ones
Sleep till the first flutter of dawn
From my window, I enjoy this diurnal scene
Repeating itself in methodical precision
Until someday, into heaven’s insurmountable heights
The young ones take off on tiny wings!

A sight so accustomed, cheery and gleeful
My eyes would soon be deprived of
And the thought makes me ill at ease
A wonder it is, the young ones
Inexperienced though, thrives so well
On catapulted suddenly into an eerie world!

What husbandry in nature!
What Godly solicitude!

The next morn, my heart missed a beat
At what I espied through my open window.
On the ground lay the swallow’s nest
Ripped, broken and blown to pieces
Like a heap of rubble after a tremor.
By its side lay a few downy feathers
The sad reminder of a stark felony!

In an instant flashed past
The grim image of the black Tom cat
That prowls my courtyard in the dark
With glowing eyes and bristly whiskers

Damning that accursed thing
I picked up that wreckage
My mind violently mutinying over
The ‘insolent might’!!