Bard of the Bunch

as he sat
eating his buttered toast
and doing the crosswords

listening to the birds
at the backyard feeder
twittering away

some as confident
as a newly signed pop singer
some less so

he wondered if they
had their own
trivia

if the feeder
was their water cooler
and some birds
recounted some great battle
from the seventh
or seventeenth century

or perhaps
a well known bird’s
well known sex life

he thought about
how man used to have
only oral traditions

and imagined
the musical meadowlark
as the bard of the bunch

stories passed down
from bird generation
to bird generation

tales that solidified
theirs as
the superior species

origin myths
and bird gods
and explanations
of the sun and the seasons

predator demons
and the gift of grain

and how the lucky ones
got to retire
for good
in Florida

or somewhere
more Southerly