No Wings or Feathers - May 11 2026

 

No Wings or Feathers

May 11 2026

Aliens have not come to earth.

There are no angels

wafting down on feathered wings.

And the dead do not linger,

troubled spirits

with unfinished business

in this bright material world;

only memories remain,

alive as ever

to haunt their loved ones’ dreams. 

So as much as I’d like to believe

in the holy and unseen

I remain a skeptic.

I’ve begun to question even love.

Perhaps because

it’s so often thwarted

disappointed

betrayed;

too much wishful thinking,

too easily carried away.

After all, why romanticize

synapses firing

and hormones flooding the brain?

Why should attraction differ

from any other chemistry

that emanates heat,

as reversible

as ice turning to water

then freezing back?

So is love over-rated?

Or am I too jaded

constrained

or even afraid

to let myself surrender?

Am I dead inside?

In need of guardian angels?

Or an alien

cleverly disguised?

An extra-terrestrial

with my nose pressed up against the glass,

a detached anthropologist

from some sterile metropolis

where cool logic rules.

Here to observe, but not interfere

in the strange but tempting rituals

of a mercurial earth,

where hot-headed men

and love-struck women

take big leaps of faith;

no wings or feathers 

to break their fall.