By The Lake Of Little Fishes Poem by Gordon R Menzies

the green water of the lake of little fishes
stroked the sand with verdant hands, where
grasshoppers lingered on the warm pebbles
and black-headed terns had come to fly
above the spiny cactus and pale rye grass
little black trees dance there with the wind
where we had come wandering at noontide
and there, defiant on the broken gravel, we
found a small, shattered bird dying roadside
its body an odd gathering of broken angles
discarded origami animate in the elements
its eyes still bright with the last of its life
as it watched its siblings soaring overhead
with its wings gathered about it like memory
and the breeze, caressing its grey feathers
like a distant father's last, quiet goodbye