Thou Art No Lesser, O Pink Flamingo Poem by Aniruddha Pathak

Thou art no migrant bird, O Pink Beauty,
But forced art to fly many a long miles
Looking for fresh habitat and water,
In search of new breeding and nesting isles.

And in this search of a shallow wetland,
Ye fly hundreds of miles in patterned file.
Once there, watching ye take off on webbed feet,
Ah what a sight when ye lift off in style!

Thanks to vast wetlands getting polluted,
Despite thine number threatened art thou still,
What with habitats getting degraded,
Should ye lose out, oh what a cruel ill!

I watch when ye fly in flocks of thousands,
Then settle down sighting the right wetland
Or marshland, with friends and family bands,
What gorgeous a sight ye turn lifeless land!

And now a word about thine mating dance
That pairs of males perform to charm females—
Their magical synchronised head movements,
At climax a wing salute does regale.

It's strange, O thou Lesser Pink Flamingo,
Thou art no ‘lesser'— colour nor number,
Nor beauty, nor yet dancing style ye know,
Only size that thou art any humbler!

Soon as monsoon comes to its end, I think
Of thine flocks to turn wetlands a deep pink!
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Reminiscing | 21.09.2020 |
Topic: bird, flamingo