Where Would They Live

By Laranya Mahapatra

a fish and a bird may indeed fall in love

and they build a house nearby a pond

where the bird stalks the shifting mirror

for a day's meal; being the fish' protector

and the fish searches the vast death

for her love's life and volatile fate

but a fish who has never known a bird

just sees wings as the end's harbinger

but a bird who has never met a fish

how would she know what she missed

two parallel lines whispering past

never meeting in future or past

but what of a fish blown away in a storm

stranded far away in a puddle from

all her family of fishies in the ocean

pressing worry wearing them thin

glimpses of ways she would suffer and die

because a puddle is a sea with too much sky

but what of a bird lost in a hurricane

wings dripping and struggling in vain

a current dragging the wind below

further away from the hidden sun's glow

from her place within the skies unbound

because hurricanes are skies with too much cloud

by no fault of the fish or the bird

they were caught in a storm of their world

the clock and the map were the only ones wrong

the only ones responsible for this unfinished song

of the fish and the bird in a pond or a creek

they live forever with the other in an abandoned dream

By Laranya Mahapatra