Barn Swallows

Barn Swallows

This evening, now, this scene I just observed.
At first, my tender nature was disturbed.
On my back porch two birds before I’d seen
were roosting where their nest, last year, had been.
I saw it that first summer I was here.
Their prior residence I long revered.
Was quarter-spherical and made of mud.
Their home, I know, with sweat and tears and blood.
But at the first when on the patio
some menacing displays that these birds showed.
They divebomb flying, close to me, so low.
My presence sensed, a threat, so they attack.
The only thing to do if I’d fight back.
Still strafing me, their menacing displays.
My presence they would never tolerate.
Not mere annoyance, I’d retaliate:
I want to help them better propagate.
Their paranoia I observed last year.
Like all birds, push their brood from out their lair.
Too early pushed their chicks who couldn’t fly.
Their broken bodies on my porch to die.
I hoped that if their nest I would destroy
their building efforts elsewhere could employ.
A changed location, safety paramount,
their full-developed chicks, the skies could mount!
But now these swallows only mourn their plight.
Refuse to light a candle, curse the night.
The facts remembered, all this narrative,
avoid misguided guilt, imperative.
Emotions processed through my poetry.
I bare my soul and all the world would see.
I read somewhere of migratory birds:
disturb their nests, a felony incurred!!