Why Birds Fly

Ah, that old philosophical conundrum –

do birds fly because they have hollow bones,

or do they have hollow bones because they fly?

 

On such matters, ask a biologist

seems a better bet than ask a philosopher.

 

I don’t know what the details of their answer

would be, but somewhere in the unfamiliar

landscape of scientific terms which they employ,

you’d see the word evolution stretched across the sky,

the clouds, the tops of trees and hills and mountains.

 

Just recently, as I was walking at the edge

of yet another field on my morning stroll,

I saw the local crow collective scattered

around the brown, uneven surface of the land.

 

There were so many of them that I paused

my walk. I stood and watched them as they went

about their birdy morning ritual:

take-off, ascension, glide and swoop

and swoop and glide, descend and land,

all taking turns according to the crow flight roster

which they had spent the previous night working out.

And as I watched their mesmerising movements,

I heard them laugh at all the world’s

philosophers and scientists,

whose ignorance of why birds fly

amused them greatly.

 

‘We fly,’ their whole demeanour said,

not because of any bone-related sophistry.

We fly because we want to.’

 

And all of this has left me wondering:

do so-called poets write because they have

a pencil and a notebook stuffed with paper,

or do they have a pencil and a notebook

because they write?

 

It doesn’t matter. None of us can fly

like birds, and very few, if any, of our poems

will swoop or glide, but sometimes when

we’re lucky, one or two might land.