All in Good Fun - May 14 2023

 

All in Good Fun

May 14 2023

Under the jaw

the skin was tough;

but the barbed hook

still tore a jagged line

in the stretchy pale flesh.

Then, tail thrashing

gills gasping

I threw it back,

where it sat, momentarily stunned,

before darting off

in a flash of silvered scales.

Catch and release

unharmed.

Or so I've been led to believe.

A passing fish

going about the business

of being a fish,

impaled

then jerked into bright alien air

before granted its escape.

——————

An errant shot

cracks the cold still air,

and a winged deer

staggers off into the woods,

its soft tawny coat

camouflage

against the dull autumn underbrush.

A tough animal,

descendent of survivors.

And the man

in his hunter-orange vest

shaking his head

at how badly he missed.

The random shot

of a avid outdoorsman,

and a wounded deer

whose hard life

would now be all the shorter.

——————

The dull thud

of a bird against the glass.

How unnatural

to see him motionless;

a creature of flight

dead still,

a thing as light as air

weighing down the grass

and easy prey.

But cupped

in my warm steady hand

I feel the tiny heart fluttering

too fast to count.

A shiver

passes from head to tail,

the body tenses,

wings spread.

Then, almost effortless

he leaps into the sky

and slingshots upward,

as if released

from the chains of gravity

that tether us mere mortals

to earth.

Merely concussed, I can only hope,

not brain damaged

and summoning up

one last heroic feat.

An injured bird

back in his element.

And the conceit

I have nursed it back to health.

——————

Our attempts

to set the world right,

return things

to how they were.

But the arrow of time

moves in only one direction.

What's done

is irrevocably done;

there is no undoing,

no turning back the clock.