Hi David,
Interesting subject for a poem. I think it works fairly well, apart from a few lines that felt weaker than the rest. It feels as though there's a very random sense of rhyme here, and I don't mind some level of randomness in rhyme, but it seems to be abandoned completely in the middle stanza. I found that inconsistency a bit jarring, giving a sense of the poem being underdeveloped to some degree. It might be worth trying a free verse version and a version where the middle stanza has some rhyme.
Also, you could possibly up the ante with the theatre analogy. Could the car's headlights be compared to footlights, for example?
More comments below.
All the best,
Trev
Out of the darkness ["From the road's dark wings"?]
suddenly swooped a bird
with mighty wings and legs ["mighty" feels like one of those empty epic/poetic words; any more descriptive alternative?]
so orange, in our lights,
he might have been wearing tights. [Weak line, here only to satisfy a rhyme, it feels to me, and the link with theatre doesn't justify it, in my opinion]
He waggled his big head [anything better than "big"? "startled"? "spiked"?]
and walked about a bit - ["a bit" feels unnecessary]
happy, so we thought,
at our attention -
but distracted also,
acting as though
something was the question [Develop the question idea more, without directly naming Hamlet. Is there anything to be said for an "Alas, poor bird"?]
until at last he rose
in a thunderous rush
of those mighty wings, ["broad wings"?]
leaving us mere groundlings [nice pun]
to goggle in a hush
of mute applause. [Not crazy about the ending. I think a more direct Shakespearean reference would fit better here, ideally a bird reference; e.g., "I know a hawk from a handsaw"]
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