WHAT BYRD AM I?

You say, I am a lark,
You say it as a lark,
As if I am some Byrd,
some south sea bird,
circled like the albatross
upon the crow’s nest
in some forgotten muse
perch'd high above your head,
parched adrift at sea
preaching some romantic homonym,
Pageanted, the horn’d beaks bleat
about how eagles roam, Miles
and miles above the clouds
I trumpeted,
far as eye could see,
and choirs of angels
sang like swans
A lovely lonely melody,
lost in this flock of gulls,
chorused with medleys,
muddled in mediocrity; Swash-buckled
with the pulsing rhythms of moon tide; Jonas,
the living sea! A whale of a tail!
Grey Gull,
laughing at the melancholic malady, melodramatic (extended mix)
in a course of shells, as Raven, who
takes up the choruses of crows
calls out fortunes he beheld
and scatters them upon the shoals;
The endless shoals, the endless sea,
Something for a lark to see!

Lucan Charchuk, copyright 2003