Bird Days and Nights

SLAM Katya’s Prompt 2/19/04: Secret life/free verse.

Write a poem in which you tell, or keep, a secret, or reveal a secret life, or explore the phrase “secret life.”.

Bird Days and Nights



I teach twenty baby birds,
wrapping them tenderly in lessons,
feeding them number operations
and assorted worms of language.
To them I am just "Teacher".

I fly the sky, soaring on breeze,
cawing with the other birds
as we hold "V" formations
in currents that lift and drop.
To them I am just "Friend".

But nights, I leave my roost.
Their eyes are shut and cannot see
when I drift the clouds and sail the winds.
Then faster than a falcon dives,
I plummet into my secret.

Twenty spins and seven twirls
guide me into the night
where secrets fly across the reach
of what no others see.

Twenty spins and seven twirls
I ride my magic quill,
and when I reach the edge of dawn
my brain knows things they don’t.

I teach twenty baby birds
wrapping them in verbs and nouns,
feeding them with geography lessons
and assorted worms of graphs.
To them I am just "Teacher".

I fly with the flock, circling seasons,
flapping air streams for others.
And as we migrate
toward fairer climes,
to them I am just "Friend".

But nights, I leave the nested tree
when their eyes are blind to my flight,
and I drift the clouds and sail the winds.
Then faster than a falcon dives,
I plummet into my secret.

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