On a Roof

I’ll have to buy a cage for birds, But not to keep them as a pet, To screen across my chimney top. They like to perch there for the heat, And pass out from the noxious fumes, And cause me quite a furnace bill. At least that’s what I’ll tell someone Should he or she stop, asking why. I don’t know what makes me ashamed To care at all for feathered things. Afraid some neighbor might advise, “A flock won’t care one bird or less.” I’ll have to get my ladder out And scrape the souls of rubber boots To clean off sodden gutter leaves So I don’t trudge the rungs and slip, And fall, and die with no one to Explain why I’ll be climbing there.