I inquired of a cardinal,
What’s with the red?
Wouldn’t camouflage brown
Be safer instead?
He pondered it briefly
And breezily said:
My breed’s really not
The cowering kind.
We like to stand out,
Easy to find,
Ready to fight
If you’ve trouble in mind,
And let me just add
That the females I know
Are very selective
In choosing a beaux,
But seem rather fond
Of a feathery show.
You might think that by now the Sphinx
Would have sunk into the sand,
But it sits and never slinks,
Never scratches, never blinks,
Looking out across the land,
As some ancient sculptor planned.
They build churches
To hold holiness,
But then we worship
Things measureless,
And uncontainable.
Still… sometimes attainable.
The song of a bird at sunset,
As the evening star pokes through the blue,
It will not stay, and yet,
It plucks a string in you,
No words, all feel,
Just real.
When we were kids, my father thought it was funny
To claim that he would catch the Easter Bunny,
And make a rabbit stew - a tasty way
To celebrate a happy holiday.
When Sunday came, he’d say the news was grim -
The bunny had again outsmarted him,
First stopping by our house with candy and eggs,
Then hopping over the trap with nimble legs!
Love is a feeling,
A force of the will,
Perhaps revealing
A sort of skill
At truly discerning
Beneath the skin
The fire burning
The heart within.
