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?
Copyright © Sidney Beck | Year Posted 2014
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