Dear Dead Bird

Dear Dead Bird

I am sorry you have left this world,

not just because you will never fly again,
but because this world you have left
is full of cruelty and anguish
created by beings who should know better...

Thank you for living a life of true freedom...

a selfless life where you took only what you needed to survive.
Were I a coral polyp or a dandelion seed, I might know such freedom.

But alas, I have been blessed with a great imagination...
I can imagine a peaceful rally in Ankara...

a heroic father in Beirut...

mourners at a funeral in Baghdad...

the love of a couple at a concert in Paris...

students strolling through a Kenyan university.

But my imagination falters...
...at the complete...
...lack of empathy...
...needed to end the lives of...
innocents

I may not have the answers,
But I'll sing my song in the hope that, one day,
men and women will walk on this earth

with the same dignity

with which birds fly 

***

“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” 

~ Maya Angelou

“Man can now fly in the air like a bird, swim under the ocean like a fish, he can burrow into the ground like a mole. Now if only he could walk the earth like a man, this would be paradise.” 

~ Tommy Douglas