He loved walking around the small lake. He could make a circuit in just under 40 minutes. If. If he didn’t stop to marvel at or photograph some bird along the shore. The runners flashing by him gave him strange looks, likely because they didn’t see the beauty in this bird’s feathers, how the light played off that bird’s beak. He was a runner once, until his knees gave out. But he can’t remember much of the paths he ran, just moment after moment of what was on the ground in front of him.
His extended wings
momentarily block the sun
setting his feather tips ablaze.
His vermillion talons grasp
the waiting branch threatening
to break it from the tree
unless is bends to his will.
His curved beak arches
against an orange sky
holding tightly to
the retreating sun.
I can only watch
a majestic moment
and believe that somewhere
the must be a God
for nature alone could not
conceive of a creature
of such beauty, such passion.
They pause
in their foraging in the lawn
to peer up at us,
strange looking interlopers,
but they are used
to us by now
and return
to the task at hand.
We no longer
find them strange
though we never quite
get used to the curved
salmon colored beaks,
and we do wonder
why the ancient
Egyptians held
them sacred.
It seems that they
have never forgiven
their Egyptian ancestors
from affixing
their head
to a man, god
or no god, he
couldn’t find
a grub if his life
depended on it.
an old writer and his words 