Poem: A Chick from the Nest Fell

A Chick from the Nest Fell

A chick from the nest fell to the ground

too early to fly and by the time I found

It, too weak to even lift its head to be fed.

I saw it on the cement as it wiggled, not dead

But writhing and trying to get away, turning 

Its body, then working desperately, earning,

In its desperation, a final turn of its head

And I couldn’t bring myself to kill it

So I walked away doing work in the garden—bits

Of mowing, unloading manure into the earth

And later, when I came back it showed worth

In its continuing struggle, there in the shade

To avoid me or whatever it felt could have made

It feel more pain than it already suffered

And part of me thought I should end what suffered

Yet I knew if it could live just a bit more

It was better than if it had not anymore.

What are we, forms of life, when animation stops?

Insensible then of what even the rain drops

Offer the parched land or the teeming floods

That in some way even cause life in our blood.

Was it cruel that I left that little bird 

To later be eaten by some cat or preying bird?

Or was it better to let it live and still see

Something? Who can know? Certainly not me.

May 2024

About This Poem

This one is recent enough for me to remember what inspired me and it was just what I wrote of in the poem. The question of mercy killing has always bothered me and this attempts to explain that. The photo is just the sun filtering through the branches of the tree where the nest was.