Have you ever seen a dead bird
Laying on the ground?

The trees sing out
With birdsong sweet
The skies are speckled by
Birds in flight

Flocks gather in the fields
And feast on the corn
Seagulls gather on the shore
Or cluster around the fishing boats

In city gardens
On wooded hills
In the summer heat
And the winters freeze

Birds are a backdrop
To enrich the working day
Songs so constant
As to go unheard

But I ask because I do not know
A question that has troubled me
Where do the birds go
When they die?

I’ve not seen their bodies
On the land
Or found them
Cast about the streets

Gulls copses do not litter the beach
Washed in by the tide
The hilltop woods
Do not hide the graves

So I ask once more
Where is their final rest?
And I like to wonder
To ask “Could it be”

That nature takes them
From this world
To the next
Because they have not forgotten the path

They fly both up
And move on through
Not wary of the shade of death
But seeing only better skies