Things with Wings

These trumpeting geese wake me every day. Their deep voices carry in the foggy morning rain.

I ponder upon how it is that many things with wings found light ligaments in place of their feet:

A bat is just a rat that finally took flight to escape the plight of the destitute streets.

A caterpillar would be a worm, but at some point it learned that beauty could be found underground, or buried deep in a cocoon.

With silk woven without a loom the worm still weaves the softest cloth. So why do we think the butterfly is so much more beautiful than the moth?

Its dusty wings are dull and tattered like our neglected things atop our mantles, or the wardrobes’ cobweb-laden wedding gown

Left with whimsical memories of the freed doves – and the dove is just a pigeon that we love for her soft, white down.

But does the pigeon know that we see her as a clown? Why is she the pauper while her sister wears the crown?

And lastly, the crying girl who leans over her balcony finally dives into the sky with her good-byes damp on her pillowcase.

She didn’t fly then, but found her wings in the pile of things discarded from her room shortly after her guest-less wake.

Her body slumbered, forgotten, slowly sinking to the bottom of the geese’s’ foggy lake

Where the vultures can’t find her and feed down to her bones; where all of the things with wings can never travel, she rests alone.

But in the sky she’s learned to fly with the bats at night and the geese at dawn, and through the day all of the things with wings preen her feathers and sing her songs.

The same things who couldn’t grow wings carry on. Undaunted still, though not yet angels, they simply meander along.