my cheerfulness is artfully
handcrafted, bill to tail:
meticulous facsimile,
full-colour and full-scale.
I launch it on its ragged bit of string
out on the cold and dark, my frail decoy;
hoping against the odds that it may bring
down from Heaven's great storm of roaring wings
one warm and feathered, breathing, living joy.
-- GPL Apr 2008 D. A. Clarke