Must Feed Those Birds

Written on an impulse.

 

Looked out the kitchen window,

Hard yard of ice-covered snow

On the hill, bird feeder needed seed

Went out back, tried to walk the slope

Knew right off it was no go

 

Don’t know where I got the idea

Shuffled over to the right

A little less incline there

Got a running start

Attempted a charge up the bank

 

Wife should have been recording

This stunt worthy of those a******s

That you see on TV, and now a movie

Their painful feats planned, lucrative

Mine thoughtless, entirely gratis

 

Didn’t get far, probably a good thing

Behind me feet went airborne, legs still raced

The ice though slick, had fine grit

Kissed it with my lower lip and slid

Crimson trail meandered on white

 

First thought was ER for me

Like my wife who went down

Just days ago, walking cautiously,

Broke her wrist; I chided her

Undeserving, I got up lucky

 

Quick short steps to the house

Straight to the freezer, grabbed i -

Civilized cousin of my pitiless foe

The third power, my only answer, 

To swelling lip and shrinking pride

 

I’m sure she tired of me saying

What the Hell was I thinking?

Can’t remember much thought process

Only, “If I get a running start I can make it.”

This, from a normally nimble mind

 

Really hope the neighbors didn’t see

They’d imagine I sleep with an open tube

of Superglue by my nose

With a head full of fried macaroni

Then tell the kids, “That’s why you just say no.”

 

Should I curse my stupidity, immaturity?

Lament that fifty-one year’s experience,

Did not cause me to hesitate, consider options

Does this mean I have learned little,

And doomed to repeat the follies of the young?

 

Or, ought I celebrate that I’ve not grown stodgy

Nor taken a slide toward a geriatric outlook on life

Afraid to take risks, a self-made invalid

Rather, acting with the recklessness of youth

Thus, proved an impulsive ageless spirit.