Long ago, there was a bird who sang but just once in her life From the moment she left the nest She searched the relentlessly for a thorn tree Never resting until she found one Then she began to sing More sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth But carry away in the rapture of the song She impaled herself on the longest, sharpest thorn As she was dying She rose above her own agony to out-sing even the lark and the nightingale The thorn bird traded her life for that one song And the whole world was capilated to listen And God, in His heaven smiles As her very best was brought out only of the cost of great pain Driven by the thorn, with no thought for her death to come But when we push the thorn into our breast We know, we understand, and still, we choose the pain of the thorn