Poem: "The Birdlands"
This poem came out of the June 3, 2014 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompt from ellenmillion and my_partner_doug. It also fills the "war" square in my 5-22-14 card for the Origfic Bingo fest. This poem belongs to the Torn World project, although it hasn't gone through the Canon Board yet. It has been sponsored by Anthony & Shirley Barrette.
The Birdlands
The first contact with the new shard was a bird.
The bird was twelve feet tall and mostly scarlet
with wings of yellow, green, and blue.
It had an erectile crest and a beak like an axe,
and the first thing that it did on spying
the exploration party that approached
was to eat Science Master Belarv.
The rest of them, quite sensibly,
ran screaming back to camp.
They sent a requisition for
soldiers and weapons and armor
and other things useful for withstanding
a shard full of giant carnivorous birds.
Then they saw someone riding on one.
The first three reports were dismissed
as drunken nonsense or outright lies,
but as the claims added up, it was
finally admitted that the natives had
somehow domesticated the unlicensed beasts.
They sent a request for even more soldiers.
The Army sent back quite a lot,
happy to have a whole new shard to conquer.
Needless to say, that plan
did not survive first contact with the enemy.