Feed the birds
Why do we feed the birds? Why do we care?
Robins, Blackbirds, Sparrows, the lone Fieldfare.
Out with the food and dishes of water.
Spring, all summer long, autumn and winter.
Why do we feed the birds, common and rare?
Can they not find their own water and fare?
Have we taken the land - so much they can not
Find the food they need. Did we take the lot?
Yet for millions of years they survived.
And, look, in all that time we never tried.
They were out there and we stayed put in here
Comfortable with our cakes, ale and beer.
The birds and beasts in the fields and rough woods
Lived and died as all temporal life should
Lest with help from the human, kind or not,
Would fight on and seem not to mind one jot.
But John Clare, even in eighteen twenty four
Says that ‘dames on purpose daily throw
Pity’s crumbs for them perched at the window
For the joy given’; this our quid pro quo.
And so we see it’s not a selfless act
Feeding the birds, it is much more a pact.
What we give to them, they give us back more.
But at the end I still ask what’s it for.
Feed the wild birds, for their sake or for ours?
Let’s ask the question, for the here and now:
Do they need us, or do we make them soft?
Would they be stronger? Oh, I’ve asked that oft…
…enough.
© RM Meyer
Braeintra (completed March 2023)
