A Fine Magpie
Who Names What She Sees
A Fine Magpie
by Chanda Singleton Griesë
Some things are gray, others are pied
How comforting to know there is such a thing
as black-and-white—an objective "notion" that
doesn’t change like shifting shadows in culture wars
Art is good if it is beautiful, ordered, sublime
Good is true if it does what is right all the time
Truth is beautiful, for on its bars hangs the universe
not like the random throw of Yahtzee dice
nor the mimicry of the shiny magpie
in pert words, cocks her head side-wise
while she parrots all she hears without
the knowledge that holds water
now, there’s a fine kind of magpie
instead of naming what she hears
knows enough to name
exactly what she sees
