Bird Lectures

“I wonder what kind of bird that is?” I asked.

“That is a sparrow,” the young doctoral candidate said.

“Oh look!” I said. “That one looks like a female blue-jay!”

“No, that is just a pigeon! There are only

Two types of birds,” he insisted,

“Sparrows and pigeons.”

“Well what is a cardinal?” I asked.

“That is just a pigeon.”

“What about the finches?”

“Sparrows,” he concluded.

“What about a hummingbird?”

“That’s actually a form of bee.”

He rolled his eyes at me,

As if my brain were dead.

“There are only two types of birds,” he slowly said,

Snapping his fingers and stamping his foot down

So hard on the floor that the windows rattled.

“Sparrows, and pigeons!” he re-insisted,

“Oh, and woodpeckers....”

I can’t wait to read his dissertation.

——

My son and I were watching the birds

Eat the seed that he had put out

On a snowy day, and he overheard

Their breakfast conversation,

And told me what they were saying

As I ate mine.

“It’s a good thing they fed us today,” said the mother blue jay,

“For where exactly would we ever have found any worms?”

“In a dog’s butt,” my son heard 

The daddy blue jay grunt matter-of-factly.

“Yummmm!” I groaned. “I’ll never hear 

The birds sing the same way again.”

———

When a bird walks on the snow,

It doesn’t sink down into it,

Because there’s really nothing to a bird.

Just some fluff, with feathers on it,

A layer of black to form an eye,

And hollow bones, so they can fly.

We might not even believe they’re real,

If we didn’t see bird-seed disappear,

And the mess they leave behind.

But the birds don’t think

There’s much to us,

Just some tufts of hair

We fuss over, and the solid bones

We’re founded on,

We grounded ones, who cannot even fly.

-jenn