The Question of Birds

How long does a bird live?
A robin or a sparrow or a jay.
How large is its brain?
What are its cognitive powers?
Does it have any sense of time or change?
How much does it feel of the cold or heat?
Easy enough to know these things,
With a click and a click.

Not long, not large, not much
Would be the answer
To the question of birds.

But if we question our own ability to answer the question,
Our capacity to carve an understanding
Within the hardened range of our own comprehension,
Of a bird or of anything, could we ask:

Would it ever fear the turning of the leaves in Fall?
Might it feel the ache of the old age of a brief life?
Could it know any regret,
Or the sharp loss of other brief lives?
Clutching to a narrow branch high in a leafless tree,
Head tucked against the grey mist,
Could it ever feel a longing for time
To bloom forward?