by yellowoftops

So today I wrote this poem.

  We used to stand in formation in our,
  Perfect little rows,
  Even though it was hot,
  Even though it was painfully fatiguing.

  We stood in our,
  Perfect little rows,
  Because it said something about who we were,
  And how committed we were to that identity.

  But in the formation, in those,
  Perfect little rows,
  There were some among us who realized,
  That we were being looked down upon.

  That there were birds in the sky,
  Who wouldn't fight in our wars,
  And who looked at us struggling,
  Not caring in the least about our efforts.

It was inspired by experiences that I had standing in formation in Texas in the summer heat wearing a polyester suit with long sleeves and a tie. Fucking fun. At least my tie was a clip on.

So I wrote this poem today but it's been an idea kicking around in my head for 10 years now. That birds would fly over us and just be free and not give a shit about what we were doing. I like that about birds. I wrote the poem down today because Formerly_Me referenced Slaughterhouse Five which I only read for the first time about a month ago, but brought some of the same ideas up.

Before that book I had found a similar idea in a Ray Bradbury short story called "There Will Come Soft Rains" which is based upon this poem. This is the story

And this is the poem by Sarah Teasdale.

  There will come soft rains and the
  smell of the ground,
  And swallows circling with their
  shimmering sound;

  And frogs in the pools singing at
  night,
  And wild plum-trees in tremulous
  white;

  Robins will wear their feathery fire
  Whistling their whims on a low
  fence-wire;

  And not one will know of the war,
  not one
  Will care at last when it done.

  Not one would mind, neither bird
  nor tree
  If mankind perished utterly;

  And Spring herself, when she woke
  at dawn,
  Would scarcely know that we were gone.