satan was a bird

The first angels were all birds, eventually.
Oh, spirit first, shifting in light and
coursing through patterns and spectra,
but as matter awoke and took form
and they saw
the pulsing and wriggling beings
proliferating in variety and abundance,
they were like "gross." 'Til they all saw

birds. Dinosaurs, even soaring pteranodon
didn't do it for them. They had already invented
kites, and were flying them from heights. This flesh-kite
with bone struts seemed ugly but functional. Interesting,
not fascinating. Then they all saw birds.

Angels used to pay not much attention to the world
for millennia. They understood they were messengers
of God, yet this function was somewhat mysterious.
Understood to be more for later than now.

Then they saw birds, and the whole scheme became
clear. As starlings take off en masse
and murmuration, flying in twisting, shifting
synchrony upon some cryptic signal to launch,
they all became birds. Some swooped down
becoming feather and flesh, eventually
a death dive.

Others simply took that form in spirit,
an idea of self that became fixed, because
never surely to be broken. And ready and alert,
they waited for the messages they'd take
to these beings,

who were surely God's image.

Later, there was an outcry: "Aw, MAN!"

"THESE things?" Okay. Most
of the angels

contorted and warped their spirit
in painful wrench rearranged - but
they were not giving up those wings.

Some angels, though

were not having it.

At all.