In Flight: A #Poem about Survival

Fly high little bird
Swallow on the wing
Swift as you circle
Soft as you sing;

Fly free little bird
Head into the wind
Deftly descending
Fodder to find.

Glide high soaring bird
Drift on the air
Catching the thermals
Hovering there;

Hunt well, little bird
Soaring bird, too
One feeds on earthworms
The other, on you:

No flight is for free
On this tooth-and-claw earth
For all have to feed
In abundance, in dearth;

Feed well, little bird
Soaring bird too
Scraps to your hatchlings
So to continue:

Even so fly
If I could, I’d be free
As you seem, without care;
Not grow hungry and die.

© Experimentsinfiction 2020, All Rights Reserved

I wrote this poem for the dVerse prompt: the first time I’ve had a go at this. The prompt was FLYING/FLIGHT, and called for for reference to at least one winged, non-mythical creature. It stated that free verse best suited the theme of flight, so I played with this idea: sometimes what we think of as freedom is another creature’s fight for survival.

32 thoughts on “In Flight: A #Poem about Survival

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  1. You have a beautiful poem. I watch the birds come to my feeder all day long every day. You are right the fly back and forth eating weather in plenty of in want! Well done.
    Dwight

    1. Thank you! I love swallows and swifts but I also love birds of prey – they have a different kind of beauty, and they’re all just trying to stay alive.

  2. This is beautiful. Survival is pure instinct, and you capture that well in this piece. I also see themes of the cycle of life and death, especially as it pertains to nature. Great piece!

  3. and at the same time it is also ours about experience. if nature is built in its own nature, like birds, we humans still try a means that makes us more collective and less individualistic. our survival, and by extension of humanity, depends on the collective flight. I really liked the poem, its message and sensitivity.

    1. Thank you, that’s true – we sink or swim as a species together in the end, I think, although some people might think they can survive as individuals.

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