The Black Squirrel
An inspired poem and tribute to my priest.
The Squirrel scampered up the pine
with hunger in his head
for hanging from a distant wire
my bird feed lay ahead
Black and bushy his tail flickered
like polished leather his eyes did gleam
Dark brown was his skinny branch
across the feeder, shining green
Down below sat a squirrel in silver clad
looking quizzically up above
Merely a spectating bystander
matching the innocence of doves
Blacky took a breath
his tail did unfurl
as he leapt and dared to dream
that he was a flying squirrel!
A flying squirrel is not a cat
he did not land upon his feet
His dulling eyes now see silver squirrel
eating all my bird seed.
A poem written while watching a silver squirrel steal nuts from a black squirrel’s hiding spot, and reading Fr. Justin’s ( Geek Orthodox ) “The Black Knight” from his collection of poems in “My Heart Leaps Up”.
“My Heart Leaps Up” is a book where I remember how divine it is that we can participate with God and man to create beautiful and wonderful things. The sins we do in secret affect all of man, the poems that we write in secret heal the world…
Or lead someone to over-analyse squirrel-drama
Wonderful! I initially thought you were going for “Spring”, so discovering this to be a squirrel version of “The Black Knight” (published at the end of this piece: https://geekorthodox.substack.com/p/making-sense-of-the-world-through) was quite the surprise! One of the biggest surprises, in fact, in sharing my book has been how popular that particular “first” poem of mine has been…
This is fabulous!