Eat Crow

The thing you have to do in this world,

to thrive and prosper and get ahead,

although it may seem to you at the time

the opposite, failing and falling afoul,

is learn to like, even live, to eat crow.

Let this begin in your marital relations,

where the wife will be serving it

feathers first. These go down a bit hard.

Quills’ll be getting stuck in your throat,

and that black (what is that part of the feather?)

Wait a minute till I go look it up. Well,

here is a whole bloody lesson on feathers:

The part I called quill is, expertly, the rachis,

or, at the bottom, a hollow shaft called the calamus.

That fluffy, or may we say, feathery, part, is the vane

I left to look up. It is composed of barbs,

barbules and hooklets; toward the base are downy barbs

but these will bother you hardly at all.

After you’ve eaten all the feathers,

the rest of the bird is easy, except for the beak and head,

which are also a pain in the neck, and normally served next

if not already there. But once they’re down,  no pun

intended, you’ll have it licked, except for the feet 

and intestines, of course; 

however, at this point, you’ll have a head of steam up

and wolf down the rest.