It's a beautiful thing I suppose at
first, outside my window
each morning—a hundred or so
sparrows that can't resist singing,
each punching a hole in the
cheap silence, sharpening
to a nice fine point
another one of the universe's
amorphous lumps of potentiality,
spinning one more dull strand
of space—formerly reserved
for something tedious
to occur—into the gold
of what's actually happening
even as I bend
to write it.
But I admire them less
when I descend to street level.
Walking past their lean environs,
it isn't difficult to see
that the price they pay
for their kinetic abilities—
their singing prowess, their
admirable near-weightlessness,
their sleek fleetness of wing
and of foot in the lilac bushes—
is instant panic
at the slightest hint of foot traffic
and an unwinnable war
for territory and resources
against even the least
formidable wind.
