Winged Lessons
by Odin Roark

Sitting astride his backpack,
A roadside nomadic looked up from his book.
The sun oppressing,
The sand distressing,
The bird noise progressing.

“From where came your right
To straddle fence wire and incessantly complain
With pompous cawing at a resting traveler,
As if he didn’t belong?

Who made you judge and jury for speeding cars
Trying to avoid your missile-like whitewash
As they chase setting suns
And see me only as a roadside shadow?

What do you know of windblown highway ditches as nightly shelter,
Or roadside memorials of white-cross remembrances,
All kinds of lives suddenly stopped?

Rather than making all that commotion,
Wouldn’t you be better off listening a little more,
Enjoying the fluttering quiet of those beautiful black-opal wings,
As you swoop in on sign posts and rusted-out abandoned cars?

What’s with your nasty disposition, anyway?
And why aren’t you carrying on like the raven you are,
Instead of the your noisy lessor specie, the crow?

Oh never mind.
Just shove off.
Let me have some peace
While I work through Poe’s take on your gnarly purpose.
Better still, just shut up and listen.”

‘And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!’

“See what I mean…
Maybe this Poe fella is trying to explain
Neither one of us is gonna live forever,
So…”