Feeding the Birds

What does it matter? The words scattered out there, strewn on the barren cold ground like breadcrumbs thrown to the birds. What happens to them then is up to fate, happenstance, chance. Maybe a whole flock of winter hungry birds will descend upon them, gorge themselves to satiation on them, leaving nothing behind as they struggle back into the air on their eternal quest for some new word scraps to gorge themselves on.

Perhaps, though, the words will remain there, perhaps too many reading birds have already eaten their fill for the day, perhaps the words themselves look so unappetising spread across the page as they are: looking carelessly scattered, thrown down in haste. Perhaps the birds are more discerning; perhaps they get batter than this poor quality mass-produced white loaf elsewhere. Perhaps there is someone else a few web pages, a few books away, who bakes their own word-bread with loving tender care and scatters only the finest, freshest home-made crumbs out to the birds.

Maybe the birds are tired of breadcrumbs; other gardens have nuts, bacon rinds, fat and all those other things you could tempt the birds into your garden with….

That is, if only you had the time and patience for it all: day after day, week after week down the years until it seems you have no words left and so the birds fly away, forever.