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Gospel According to the Birds

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Books are wonderful

Black tracks across the page

Birds to say

There’s something here

Someone inked our talons

And we have walked on lines

Somehow

And there’s a message

Someone overheard a gospel

Before we were

Put back on our branches

Ancient pens

And when we’re gone

Our larger feathers go to humans

Who are

Surprised by grace

To leave a message

Whispers of angels

Like the ones who took their wings

To guide us

In our flights across the page

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They take the credit

Though we guess it is their story

More than ours

We need to messages

No gospels

We emerge into life

Knowing how to fly

How to listen to impulses

The small glories

We would never hide

Or cease in all our starts and stops

From praising the creator

You can hear us

Humans

Our song is perfect

Without lessons

Or egos

Or prevarications

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We could say praise us

In our stories

We know better

Without knowing

We fly

We sing

We know

God loves us

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What is made by birds walking across skin that has a third opportunity?

The answer is a page whose words resemble tracks upon vellum made by animals once alive, whose skin is stretched for a second chance at life, so to say, bearing a story now to offer life for a third time, especially if the story be a gospel.

This is the kind of riddle that literate medieval people enjoyed together, literate meaning mostly monks, the kind who kept texts that had not been destroyed in the fall, thus saving what was left and what could feed into new nourishing, again to say, mostly in Europe a new civilization

The birds talking is not typical back then but my idea now.  And Aesop.  And Aristophanes.

Sorry, teacher can’t stop chirping.

Old English riddles are found in The Exeter Book, a volume discovered that had served as a coaster and something for impatience to glide a knife into (or why anyone would drive a knife into, along a book).  A not-hiding glory to be plainly found, opened, and discovered.

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Photo by Mehdi Sepehri on Unsplash

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