A Combination of Wings

The Ancient Modern

A Combination of Wings… A Fairy Tale in Verse /  Joshua Alan Sturgill

I write about
              a Raven
who befriends
an Old Grey Cat

And I illustrate the books
              that chronicle
their grand adventures.

They have an enemy:
              a Scientist
who cages mice
for her experiments.

But the Raven 
and the Cat conspire
to release them!

The scientist wears
uncomfortable clothing
              under her lab coat
which makes her
always itching, always grumpy.

So she scratches 
and she invents.
               I write about 
what she invents:

only chemicals!
She wants nothing else
               but chemicals
—new, amazing, dangerous.

She wants
to make them first
               and only later
find out what they do.
She wants to test them
on the mice.

But the Raven 
and the Old Grey Cat
               break her beakers
and smash
her fires. She tries
to catch them—how many
traps she sets!

Yet the Raven
and the Cat are far
more clever, more agile,
               more daring 
than she is!        Her science
can’t defeat them!

I illustrate all
the ways the Raven
and the Cat succeed:

their combination
               of wings and claws
               of tooth and beak

their cat’s-eye, bird’s-eye
cunning.

All poetry and supplementary material: copyright 2019 by Joshua Alan Sturgill