I Know Why The Snow Bird Sings
not because she’s particularly happy waiting out the spring.
And not merely because she knows the music, having inherited the score,
and not because she’s stiffening her courage to face some unwanted chore.
And not because she’s so devout she just can’t help but comply
with some chirpy-beaked, avian conductor waving a winged baton,
and not because she’s trying to please some showy, plumed mate,
and not at all because she’s certain of her or anyone’s fate.
The wind brought snow and bitter cold,
and still the snow bird sings.The branch she found
was hardly sound, and slippery in her grasp,
and the icy edge discouraged its guest from stopping as she passed.
But stop she did right out in the open, snow clumps plopping down,
then commenced to sing a winsome tune anyone could hear.
There might have been weasels lurking just in the underbrush there,
or BB gun hunters with Christmas weapons out to prove they’re boys.
There might have been a snowy owl who wouldn’t stop to care
that snow bird might have a family herself that brought her perching there.
I know why the snow bird sings with that unerring charm.
A swifting tail, a flipping whisker, eyes that seem to glow,
he’ll hardly throw off a single cue that anyone might notice.
The snow bird sings because she can, because it’s who she is,
come Christmas Cats or BB gun hunters, it’s who she surely is.
Were she to end up supper or some sniper’s momentary prize,
it wouldn’t change an instant in anybody’s life.
She lives to live not to impress,
she knows nothing she must prove.
The songs she sings like the branch she holds,
her permanently temporary home.
She’ll fly on and just be gone like she was previously here,
her presence as permanent as her passing through,
was she ever really there?
We in this life create much strife imagining the whys and wheres,
we ask the snow bird why she sings just as if that matters here.
Merry Christmas,
david
©2012 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved
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