We, birds in pain,
Put our trust in branches
Too weak to hold the weight of these dreams
This saffron grief is too fragrant
For our evergreen pine noses.
The everyday calamity
The everyman dream
Burns through the soil in our lungs,  
Memories of summer are now lost in September rain.
I am here dreaming of mending hearts
That have braved more than they can bear
But these drooping eyelids
Are stuck in endless night cycles
Of listening to the sounds of misery

I've traded the butterflies in my stomach for birds
woodpeckers,— they seem to be of the groans
I have around
you.

tap, tap, tap

There goes the sound of my love for you,
flying south to the warmest parts of
my heart

Truly I am bird shy in expressing my love

Is this truly
love?

Butterflies are birds now

There’s a concert in my back yard
solos and duets all day
a circus with acrobatics
clowns painted with reds, blues and browns
just feet from my perch
here as I peck on the  keys
the stars fly in
then flit away with ease
as if to tell me:
you can’t hold me long
with your seeds and your eyes
we are free to dive the skies.

The crows outside my window
Feast on what I have done
And the birds upon the wire
Toss with restless desire
For what I’ve done I’ve locked away
In a cage if prickly bush
And only the smart
Crafty black crows
Can slip to see my mush

Yet last, the crowbrids call
A shrill that warns them all
And ah —alas— in frenzy of fear
The crafty black crow
Seeing no exit clear
Frantics and pushes
All against the spines
And traps itself in
And having no option
All it does is scream
And no one could hear
It’s desperate dying dream of
Freedom

And soon enough, as days passed by
The crows feast again
On mush twice the size
And the birds on the wire
Still violently wish
That they too could pick
If only it wasn’t so sick

In this view, I know the name
of that village on the hill
but I forget the next and the next

Most of these birds, this song,
were here before
but the heft and pin-black eye
of the red kite are new,
not known

And though the sharp-scrape panic
as the pheasant protests
has sounded a thousand times past,
these days it’s heard different

The hedgerow pulse
seems quickened as the dipped flit
of three blue **** from here to there
declares that something is coming

Maybe too early to call spring,
the jackdaw on a slack wire
is still willing to give energy to balance,
as his eye sees good things

And the fettered earth begins to flex
as something elliptical
solar
inherent
returns to tickle us

Blue ****, sparrows and some rather pretty birds indeed
Gathering around their special wooden box of feed
Respectfully waiting for their turns to pick a seed
Then they fly away and I'm thrilled about my good deed

For I'm the supplier - in their eyes the Mighty Lord
I know a few things but mainly where the food is stored
Feeling a little superior is my reward
Though most times they believe I deserve to be ignored

a
   poem
      hides a
     secret within a
    letter or placing of
     a word look carefully
           and intent-fully
                   a secret you may have
                heard examine it ever closely
                       what’s preferred
                  or inferred if you
         open read it slowly
     it may fly out
like a
bird