cw: references to using canaries in coal mines

It was painful when the canary’s best efforts
were met with derision. It sang for
unkind hands, and those hands took
it and brought it deep in the mines,
where it was not suited. It missed
the sunshine of its little back
room, and even its vellum
and ink. The canary did not,
could not, sing down there,
and it was called a fluke; and
it was told that it was bad; and
it returned to suffocating itself
on poetry. When the gentle hands
next came, it did not trust them,
so was it hurt. But gentle hands
are patient hands, too.