Mother birds at home,
Their babies are too young to die
Why did their children fly away?
Away in metal shells,
Forgetting feathers to cushion their fall

Cold blooded snakes bearing symbols
Stole their baby birds,
Ate their innocence,
And threw them at their enemies
To win ashes left from beauty,
beauty slithering beasts cannot obtain

The snakes are poisoned
Their leader: dead
His skin and all that mattered: shed.
And now the little birds must be slain
By enemies they'd not wished to gain

And fly away, they must
In their hulking metal shells
Carrying as many others
Underneath their arms

But whom do they choose to carry off?
Few they can help,
Thousands more; forced to stay,
Thousands they wouldn’t have to cry for,
Thousands they wouldn’t have to remember in sharp obsidian dreams,
Thousands they wouldn’t have to gun their engines
And run over, to save they few they could
If snakes hadn’t stolen them away

Cry no more;
Create feathers from metal,
Though they may at first cut your fingers
Take,
If nothing else,
Hope from endings,

And the strength to fly
after falling

Mother birds wish for their chicks to live beyond them
To a new horizon they born to see
They coo in their nests,
Shocked and unable to cry out in pain
Tithing new mothers and their newborns a wish,
To live lives that are long
For all are young
Who see hope slain
And purpose undone