The Passing Of A Songbird ~ A Satire

(Author's Note: Satire, taken from Latin satira, earlier form satura, a poetic medley. A poem ridiculing present vices or follies.
CAUTION: Not recommended for the readership which strictly prefers uplifting verse. Especially deleterious to the psychopedantic brood of academe.)


There should be no music in this poem.
It is a tale about the time I was
a songbird and lost my wings.
What good is it to sing
to a forest empty and cold
where smug violets refuse to bloom
and the air's jaundiced with hate.


At last I can make sense of it.
It all began one day at school. I, recalling
vividly, a lecture by my psychology professor
( an intellectual poseur with stern visage
and adroit command of the lectern)
authoritatively saying: "Man is just an animal
and to survive one learns to adapt."
( Street Translation: "Life's a jungle to kill
or be killed."


Not by any stretch could
I be deemed religious,
yet have always seen myself
as something more than
primordial "instincts" and form of animal.
Never could I imagine
the likes of Socrates, Michelangelo,
Shakespeare, or Mozart,
nor Moses, Jesus, Mohammed
or Gautama in such vain.
Nor to suggest I've worn a halo,
but I've never felt ameliorated
by the prospects of living
at another's demise.


To lighten the air and lessen
the tiresomeness of lecture,
I cloaked myself within the poems of Shelley.
Music flowing off lips of the lyric muse
hidden inside the lines,
throbbed with one unbroken rhyme, until
as if by incantation, I was charmed.
From the mundane realm of human body
I sallied back to provenance- the being that I am.
To see the world with bright, encouraging hue,
feel its palpable beauty at every glance:
the voiceless air with duet of passerines,
a weathered barn snug in its cloche of snow,
fields with sleeping rootchildren dreaming
of coming spring.
Rife with free illusion,
possesed with native goal,
I sprung into the lofty quest
with gladsome heart and soul.
And with the subtle hint of verse,
it was as if I were:
a cloud!
the wind!
a spirit!
a bird!



Such things are hard to put to words-
to express the feelings.
Just let me say
a sense of calm and clarity,
freedom and wonder,
all wrapped up as one.
In an instant I could be
whatever I wished-
as with a snap of the fingers it was done.


Love for lyric and free expression
always was my core,
with affection for the winsome serenades
of songbirds.
( You might say it was natural for me to be a bird.)
And there I was,
newly fledged wings,
soaring about the clouds,
above the woods below,
heart drenched in blitheful song,
without care for time
or concept of wrong.


Quite the contrast to years growing up,
enduring the pains of pedantic schooling,
finally, to be what you've yearned to be.
How wonderful, I thought,
for all of us to share this happy fate-
to live out that special something
which makes us who we are.


When it happened without invitation,
a crudeness impinged upon my sense.
Slight at first which grew ever stronger,
like the loathsome curse of a thorn lodged
beneath the flesh.
It heavied the air and coarsened the spirit-
inklings of that baser side of life.


Soon the sweetness of my singing soured.
Filtering through preverted air came
first the sounds then images morphed
out of the past: "Hundreds of Palestinians
have been killed in Israeli air attacks!"-
vis-a-vis "Kill or be killed".


( Like a child alien and defenseless in the world,
a being exposed is easily maimed.)


Scanning the classroom, I watched
as fellow classmates pliantly nodded
to the professor's precept,
when one stood up to give a deduction:
"War is merely man's natural adaptation
to survival threats by man."
( Street Translation: "We'll stay in Iraq
a hundred years if that's what it takes.")
Suddenly, without thought to consequence,
I shouted aloud: "No! No! No!
"That's not the way life works!"
Besieged by an array of censoring eyes,
I pinched myself to see had I been dreaming,
only to find, I'd already lost my feathers,
no longer was I a joyful songbird
to adorn the world with graceful hymns,
but like the others a "man" of Earth.


Thus was the passing of a songbird.


There will be those who decry
my account heretical.
To some, set aside as fool's paradise, tagged
"frivolous waste of the reader's time".
While others cast the gorge at my arrogance
that I would try and be so different.
My professor swear to my insanity,
even order my isolation for fear
were such contaigon to spread,
it would spell the doom
to his own survival.


Judge it for yourself.


But if only the world would be better for it,
when there's one less songbird who sings.


Copyright 2009 Francis Don Daniels

We Meet Again

In the concourse of our lives,
Whenever the two shall meet,
If you recognize my face
Your heart will feel mine beat.


On the boulevard of time,
Cross aeons of memory behind,
To a place our vibrations rhyme
We meet again in heart and mind.


Copyright 2009 Francis Don Daniels