Poem(s)

Bird Woman

There is a woman who lives by they sea
Her hat is all rumpled and on her coat there's a flea

She doesn't mind at all about getting wet
Her clothes are musty but she has a debt

One morning very early when she was young
She ran to the seaside where the lanterns are hung

There was to be a beautiful festival that day
With candied fruits and beads made from clay

Her mother had oft warned her aloud
To stay away from that place where the senses enshroud

For to go there too early was tempting fate
For to the mysterious monsters she was just bait

That morning in particular she had picked the wrong time
The monsters were hoping for a feast sublime

Part of the festival that day, that she did not know
Was for the monsters, the people's strength to show

The monsters, you see, did not munch on the weak
The festival was to show their prospects as bleak

When the woman, then a girl, had run down there that day
The monsters took this as a hurray

They didn't have to hunt or ensnare
Their prey had come to them without a care

The monsters began to lure her to a watery grave
By their music she was entranced, to it a slave

But all at once there rose such a din
Of thousands of birds chiming in

The spell-weaving song was completely drowned out
Its musical chords covered by feathered shouts

The girl ran away from that watery place
And went right back home to her bed, without grace

And so to this day the woman, not a girl,
Feeds the birds, now so many they swirl

And if one day another is as foolish as she
The birds will call out, echoing over the sea