The Rooster and the Pearl

In glorious song sang out
The rooster, whose clear cry
Did end light's daily drought
Which nightfall doth supply.

The others marked his song
Intoned at times precise,
And felt its power strong,
A call 'gainst slothful vice.

His daily duty done,
He dropped into the pen,
Prepared to watch the sun
Take up its course again.

Strutting through the straw,
This harbinger of day
Saw night's long languor thaw
As darkness lost its sway.

The skyline's steady torch
Raised up from 'neath the earth
Spread forth its rays to scorch
All Mother Nature's girth.

A patch of rays combined
Fell by the rooster's fence,
And there some trinket shined,
By mingled shafts commenced.

"What brilliant gleam is this?"
The biddy inward mused,
Approaching lest he miss
The cause of light diffused.

His head rocked front and back
To peck the empty air
Across the well-worn track,
The path that led him there.

Imagination stirred,
His hopes cast ample nets,
By simple farm life spurred
To place outrageous bets

On what this little star
Could be as he drew close:
Some dainty from afar
dropped near his corner post?

There lay the spot of light
Beset by wettish dirt,
The piece that caught his sight,
A kindled mark overt.

His tiny blackened eyes
No plainer sight had seen,
Such abject thing apprised,
Nor glimpsed such banal mein.

Before his pointed claws
On a fitting throne of dirt:
A pearl comprised of flaws,
White offal, sat inert.

His red comb flagged and drooped --
Crestfallen is the word --
As to the ground he stooped
To test the lore he'd heard,

For fish who swam the stream
Had told of Nature's scams,
How humans wrapped esteem
Round excrement of clams.

His beak confirmed their tales:
No pleasure in pecked pearls,
Yet this was what assails
Men's hearts from ocean whorls.

The rooster flapped small wings
And from the ground took off
To contemplate such things
Above the feeding trough:

The variance to be found
In aspects near and far,
How what for one's profound
May for the next be tar.

Alighting on the post,
He crowed, chagrined indeed,
Though then the ascending sun
Revealed his morning feed.