By A Jessie Michael
BIRDS IN FLIGHT
Birds in flight
Wings spread wide and tight
Lift off
In perfect formation
Inbuilt navigation
Flying to food and shelter
Unperturbed by storming weather
Men in flight
Crammed in rickety open boats
Set off
Flotsam of a nation
Escaping damnation
No leader, no navigator
No telling their fate in water
They look up to the sky
See birds in flight
Gliding high
In perfect formation
Inbuilt navigation
Out in front a leader
Heading to food and shelter
HAVE WE? HAVE WE?
Have we learnt another language
to challenge our little brains?
Have we walked in others’ shoes
and learnt of their pain?
Have we shared with them a cup of joy
and freely drunk of theirs too?
Have we sat at their table and
broken bread with them?
Have we stood beside the others
and thought them just the same?
Have we risen above ancient anger,
forgiven our fellow men,
thought them worthy of our compassion
and stretched out our hands?
Have we emptied the bitter cup
that diminishes all men?
Our colours are but geography,
our religions but pathways
to the same universal One.
So who is to say who is better?
It is always our own buried fear,
that we pray at the alter,
then curse the man on the street
just because he looks different
and is from another land;
just because we will not say
he is really homo deus.
A. Jessie Michael is a retired Associate Professor of English from Malaysia. She has written short stories for online journals, local magazines and newspapers. She has published an anthology of short stories Snapshots, with two other writers and most recently her own anthology The Madman and Other Stories (2016).
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