Writers Guild 3rd Sunday Write — for the Birds?

A play on words this time. Have you ever wondered? Anyhow this month’s Bloomington Writers Guild “Third Sunday Write” offered prompts the fourth Saturday, Earth Day, April 22, the day before today. So today is a cold day, unseasonably so (freeze warning this morning!), and guess what? The heat is off.

Today being Sunday, it’s wait till tomorrow to call the repair folk, whilst meanwhile leaching heat from the laptop and perusing topics, one of them having to do with “Sunlight!” (at least at the start). Thus:

(prompt 4, respond to the poem “I Was Told the Sunlight Was a Cure,” by Hanif Abdurraqib)
Line 3 (taking the title to be line one): “. . . but tell that to the lone bird who did not get the memo”
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What does the bird know? A small, flying creature who makes its living by beaking bugs, notably from the air. A feathered dive bomber of fluff and cuteness. Good for outsmarting cats in cartoons, but that’s only when caged. (Going “tweety-tweet-tweet,” yeah — you ever heard real birds? Ear shattering “Caws!”) But here, silent marauders, sweeping the skies of life. Insects. Smaller birds. Little heads near-brainless, at least for the purpose of solving riddles.

Full little bird-bellies, that’s avian cognizance. Sunlight for marking time, but in a crude way. A non-intellectual counting cadence: Eating time. Drinking time (flit off to find one a pond or a birdbath). No sunlight? — sleepy time! Time to usurp a branch, make it its own digging in with sharp talons. Fluff up those warm feathers. Tuck its head solidly into an armpit. Or is that its wingpit?

Is “wingpit” a real word?

Maybe the bird knows. . . .

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(Atlantic Puffin guest portrait courtesy of Ray Hennessy)