Celebrate the Birds Today

Today I want to celebrate the ones that are left

The winged ones that bravely crossed continents to get here

The colourful dynamos that flew past skyscrapers

Flapped wings over and around concrete jungles

Which we humans have a hard time navigating

I wake up and want to shout with gladness

At the shrill cry of the blue jay

And the tap tapping of a woodpecker

Next door on a tree

I want to yell  HOORAY when I see a flash of yellow

Brighter than a ray of sunshine

Land on the feeder rest stop

I have provided

I want to celebrate the ones who made it back

And mourn for the numbers that didn’t

Cheer for even the more numerous robin redbreasts

We might take for granted

They are still vulnerable

I want to absorb their air borne fluttering

Imprint it in my memory, fix it forever in my DNA

So that I will remember it when they are no longer here

The day will come when they can no longer

Journey through a sea-soup atmosphere of chemicals and radiation

No longer be able to compete with geo-engineered weather patterns,

Haarp clouds,

Beating against rain when it should be dry

Freezing cold when it is time to raise their young

When they will no longer be able to withstand microwaves from cell towers

Messing with their uncannily divine homing devices

Today I will celebrate the ones that made it back

To this hillside, this patch of backyard forest

I will thrill to the chirps and songs

Be ecstatic over colorful wings

And imprint it all in my senses

So that, when I am old, when my mind fails,

I will have kept company with giants