(In response to W.H. Auden’s Their Lonely Betters)

Words are for those with promises to keep.
Our forte of language causes us to weep
We create worlds and homes built from letters
Between us and the wild, our lonely betters.

We are the only who can grasp the fragile time
We can find love through an internal rhyme
And make art from the romanticization of dying
If we said we would trade this for silence we’d be lying.

Yet I see the flowers who are naturally mated
No fuss and words and neither have waited.
Only if the bees who spread the pollen knew
What troubles from the search of love can put you through.

I envy the natural serenade of the birds
They give us songs that need not words
A whim of their own, it’s how they are made
We’re missing the message in our lonely shade.