An Epilogue To A Prologue

A nest of intricate design A piece of art unmatched in decor Amid the verdurous darkness Of needle like leaves The gay habitat of a swallow and her brood. How suddenly it erupts into a clatter of sounds, As the mother bird comes diving in With a wee bit of a wriggling worm Discreetly borne in her tiny beak. Thrusting it into the gaping mouths She departs and comes again And again comes with something A whirring insect or a twisting thing. Nothing can appease her ravenous horde And on she goes ferreting about. At night fall she alights abrupt From what infinite heights, God alone knows Darting into her nest as she hovers, The din subsides............ First into a fizzle, then into sharp silence Bundled in her warmth, the little ones Sleep till the first flutter of dawn From my window, I enjoy this diurnal scene Repeating itself in methodical precision Until someday, into heaven's insurmountable heights The young ones take off on tiny wings! A sight so accustomed, cheery and gleeful My eyes would soon be deprived of And the thought makes me ill at ease A wonder it is, the young ones Inexperienced though, thrives so well On catapulted suddenly into an eerie world! What husbandry in nature! What Godly solicitude! The next morn, my heart missed a beat At what I espied through my open window. On the ground lay the swallow's nest Ripped, broken and blown to pieces Like a heap of rubble after a tremor. By its side lay, a few downy feathers The sad reminder of a stark felony! In an instant flashed past The grim image of the black Tom cat That prowls my courtyard in the dark With glowing eyes and bristly whiskers Damning that accursed thing I picked up that wreckage My mind violently mutinying over The ‘insolent might'! ! !