Challenging Poetry

learning the bees and the birds

when Dad talked about bees,
it was in reference to honey
or stings or trivia about
masses of a hive held
within a home's walls.

and when he talked about birds,
it was the cardinal lighting
in brilliant reds on the fence, or
a wren peering from a tiny hole
inside a saguaro—he saw them
identifying them from their calls,
where I was blind and clueless.

so, when
I heard about the birds and the bees,
I was unsure of the shape
of the metaphor.

Prompt ▶︎

Birds and the bees