Bird Math

"A poem should always have birds in it,"
the poet said. And "A person wants to stand
in a happy place in a poem."

Here is the mathematics of this poem:

1. My poems are often full of birds.
    But they are having a hard time
    out-shouting the black-hearted rhetoric
    spewing from my tv screen, that makes
    my heart sink and forget how to sing.

2. How can we stand in a happy place
    in the poem of our lives while
    stormtroopers are beating
    and firing upon peaceful citizens,
    and veterans and mothers,
    and caging children because
    their skin is brown?
    While people are abusing animals
    and hating each other?
    Where the world is in survival mode
    and has forgotten how to be kind?

3. I can tell you that, down by the shore,
    herons are picky-toe-ing peacefully
    along the mudflats.
    I can point out the eagle, surveying
    his kingdom from the top of a snag.
    I can show you my balcony
    full of chattering jays
    and swift little hummers,
    all living in blessed ignorance
    of the weight we humans
    are carrying.

4. Bless them. When we look up
    for a moment to track their
    heart-lifting passage across the sky,
    we remember what it was,
    once, to dream.

Inspired by "Singapore" by Mary Oliver. The italicized lines are hers.

for Susan's prompt at What's Going On: Mathematics