Magpie

A man shot a magpie on the wing.

It fell with a broken wing.

The nock snapped the bow’s string.

The man gave the bird to a priest,

Who nursed it to be released,

Then decided to keep it in a cage.

To release its gale force outrage,

The priest split the magpie’s tongue,

Expecting to hear a terrible song.

Instead he heard nothing but words,

The speech of Man, not birds:

His own prayers and curses,

And profaned Biblical verses.

The altar boys taught the magpie

To ask of everyone, “Why

Weren’t you shot from the sky?”

Ivory-Billed Woodpecker (Audubon), Sonnet #422

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here:
My Human Disguise.


















It was said you could catch but not keep one.

A farmer once tied a male to a chair,

Which soon was kindling and the rope undone,

And, instead of a door, nothing but air.

Just one could rip apart a ten inch branch

In minutes, and ravage an entire ranch

If it was built of bug-infested logs.

Its crazed cackle once filled forests and bogs,

But today it’s feared the Ivory-billed’s extinct.

I’ve watched its cousin, the Pileated,

Hammer a limb with its head into dust

And thought, does such an addled creature think,

“I too could one day be uncreated.

There must be Ivory-billed left. There must!”