🇬🇧 The Wren

The Wren

155.    Nimble, leafy brown, earthbound thing,
        The tail erect, the rear held high,
        A short dash across the forest floor;
        Strength ticking inside the bird.

156.    Her heart beats in a rush of blood
        Hundreds of times each minute.
        She moves in whips and thrusts;
        Eye-popping power on thin legs.

157.    She cuts time sequences to shreds,
        Jumps here and suddenly there;
        Something's amiss, a choppy vision,
        She moves about in skips and starts.

158.    Her metabolism is so high
        You would think the bird’s aboil.
        She must feed without pause
        Her runaway miniature body.

159.    As a wren incarnated
        I write a novel each morning,
        Devour a Sainsbury a day,
        Run to Rome and back in a week.

160.    But that’s just idle thought;
        I would collapse from heart failure
        Within the first few minutes; dead
        From exhaustion, stress and cold.

161.    I will never even come close
        In energy, athletics and appetite,
        In mental prowess, in courage,
        In heart beat, in biological clock.

162.    But she has taken to my grounds,
        Finds food under the garden oaks.
        I know her song; I see her often:
        A tarantella, a whip and she’s gone.


New in Index Ten Thousand:
Power • 155,  Heart • 156, Time sequence • 157, Metabolism: bird • 158, Run • 159,  Cold • 160, Biological clock • 161, Energy: wren • 162, Tarantella • 162,