Birds and Flowers

BIRDS AND FLOWERS If you love birds don’t cage them. What free creature Would choose a fetter? Though The warmth and food are guaranteed, And risk from storm and hawk, An Atlantic gale feels better. If you love flowers don’t pick them. What flower would choose To have its roots ripped away For all the brown sugar and teabags in China? Flowers and shoots in a cut-glass vase - In a cut-glass coffin - are dying. Pretty dried blooms carefully embalmed - are dead If you love life, death has no glory. What pharaoh would not trade His pyramid, myriad years in the building, For forty seconds worth of fresh air Blowing over the Nile with the scent of White lotus on the breeze And the fluty song of the golden oriole?