Three birds bicker on a telephone wire,
each wanting to claim communication as its own.
They tweet and tweet, overlapping, undermining,
swapping positions and stances. Hopping from foot to foot
and puffing out their feathers. A girl walks
by and catches their dispute. In her bag she carries
seed for the wild birds who visit her garden.
She offers some, but they ignore her.
So she leaves the seed on the ground and goes on her way.
As the day wears on, the bickering birds grow tired.
Hunger gnaws at them, and eventually they relent
and fly down to pick at the seed.
As soon as they leave the wire, they forget
what it was that was so important to them about it,
and after they fill their crops, all three fly off to roost.
Treeshallow Musings 