Butcher Bird Poem by Robert P Arthur

Butcher Bird

Yer can tell if you've ever strolled into a Butcher bird's yard.
Grasshoppers and mice, and small birds'r crucified, headless, on hawthorn twigs… bushes and briars.


Butcher bird's got a robber's mask
stretched over its eyes, and a hawk's
beak

hooked like an awl for crackin' paper
skulls on mossy holler stones in wet river rock or
hangin' carcasses up.

Sometimes Butcher bird cries out like a cat with wings,
severs th' head and carries it up a cedar tree
to decorate its nest.

Butcher bird's life's built of loneliness, killin' and grief
in ignorance of what it does.

Butcher bird‘s life is like my own.