"What would you like to be someday?"
"A pigeon."
I always thought it'd be nice to be a pigeon: easy access to food and beloved by mankind. Until, I learnt that we don't treat pigeons with the respect they deserve (with their ancestors being war-heros and all.) Then, I thought I could live as any respectable, preferably flying, bird. Those dreams of living a peaceful life soaring the skies were crushed when I found out that almost 3 billion birds have been lost in just North America since the 1970s (and a great number of birds crashing into windows, leading to their deaths). Although birds have greatly benefited us, and still do, many people are unaware of what they actually do besides startle farmers awake at 6am. This poem was written to call attention to the tragedy our sky-bound heroes meet.
Ensnared
by Isabella Lin, 14
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i am a rusted dragline — my gears creak endlessly in the viscous dark.
my pickaxe thumps against the deceiving stone.
fumes invade my alveoli
like an armada of shadowed warships.
and though the rust, which lingers on me, shifts and squeaks,
its insistent chirp,
a bell which longed to be tolled,
spills through my crevices like precious oil.
i am the civvy, dragged into war like the
hunted-down,
shot up,
carcass of a boar.
if the battlefield is a playground, then i am the turf.
although i stumble
and fall,
They do not. a feather may stray, but their wings stay afloat.
feral bullets soar past ruffled plumage.
messages are dropped, relayed,
then remembered.
yet,
if i were a bird,
my fate would be sealed tighter than the snares that capture us.
although metal could not stop us,
tempered panes surely can.
when the frigid air cuts through our fluffy down, and our flight takes us south,
our only predator
glass masked as air
Page created on 6/26/2025 5:32:56 AM
Last edited 6/27/2025 1:32:46 PM
