Though the kingfishers looked

Though the kingfishers looked

So beautiful; specks of shocking blue

Against the dead green and dark water.

They chased each other like in love --

And you said, "they are us."

But what I saw was food

Clenched in a beak and

The chase was not love

But hunger

Their blue so fleeting,

ordinary but bright

perhaps just birds hungry

finding food and surviving.

love not here but within us

mistaken for passion

and base

instinct.

What they left in me was experience.

never forgotten

unlike the awkward moment of disclosure

when we saw different things

and perhaps it was not food

but material to build on love

the falsehood of feeling to

perpetuate the breed

for without the passion there

would be nothing.