Sponging Off......

One often wonders whether humans learn from birds, or birds learn from misguided humans.

Maybe the latter is true .....


Blossoms in mango orchards,
harbingers of
days of young fruit,
energised
by the late
winter sunshine;

And a chirpy type
flits across,
picking at the fruit
with a well aimed beak;
testing the skin,
the firmness,
or the lack of it,
and
the ability to
prosper and grow
yet
on the parent tree.

Blinded by the
sips, slurps,
movement,
wings of color
and flights of fancy,
the fruit,
loses
its soft gold,
and half shriveled,
lives to tell the tale.

Of a show bird,
who doesn't recognize it any more,
but executes
a jeté
of a ballet pose,
as it bends down
fakely, daintily,
to admire
the honey
and the gold dust
in
another fragrant flower
in a distant garden.

Possibly waiting
to cheat another fruit,
on another tree,
once again ?....