Fighting Reflections Poem by Roy Ballard

When something vital in our cooker flunked
we sadly laid it by the bin outside;
it looked too bright and new to be defunct
but there it lay in polished, fallen pride.
It was the season when the blackbird's airs
are music to the grateful human ear
but more like challenges, defiant stares
and rude affronts to rival birds appear.
A blackbird, on the cooker's glassy face,
then saw a rival that he could not rout
nor cease to fight and that at such a pace
that fury wore his little body out.
Against himself though trying as he might
what bird or man has ever won the fight?