Like many of my poems, this was provoked by the question Why? Why does the male wall up the female? It seems the ultimate in male chauvinism. I hope you enjoy the answer. Hornbills are fruiteaters, very vulnerable because of their size and slowness.

HORNBILLS

Two gossips sitting on a branch,
Bored, relaxed and lazy.
To call them models of romance
Seems distinctly crazy.

Hunched in their sooty feathers
With a megaphone each for a beak;
Crouching like commentators
Waiting their turn to speak;

Companions in beak management
With square, strong tails for balance,
Where is the graceful courtship
Of flirting, feathered romance?

Security’s a problem for hornbills:
They aspire to a peaceful life,
So the doting hornbill husband
Walls up his darling wife.

Safe from the thieving monkeys
And circling birds of prey;
Proud chatelaine in her turret
Rocked by the branches’ sway.

Immured for the species’ safety,
Cramped, on her prison nest,
She turns the eggs over gently,
Brooding and dreaming, at rest.

Back- and forwards the hero
Flies with his gifts of fruit:
Supplies for his cherished captive.
He knows what tastes will suit.

Like Pyramus to Thisbe:
“Oh wall, show me thy chink!”
he looks for the gleaming eyeball
and feathers black as ink.

At last, when the chicks are ready
To recognise father’s call,
What a hooting of hornbills!
As they all break through the wall.

Away to the leafy branches
And lazy contemplation!
Nature’s old-fashioned romantics
Prosper by immuration.