Not Seeing

(Pre-Script: This poem takes flight if you read it as the song, "The End Of The Innocence," #25 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...) (...still waiting...)

Once there was a man who captured a bird

because he felt he loved it so much.
He loved it so much and wanted it with him always.
It was so colorful, so pretty, and oh the songs it sang.
So he clipped those colorful wings,
and put it in a cage.
The bird did not fly to the top of the cage
or sing the songs that had initially called his attention to it.
The bird lay down in the bottom of the cage
silent,
it's dull eyes
straining to stare off into a distance it could no longer see.

"Oh well at least the bird is colorful and pretty"
reasoned the man.
But the bird's colors were hard

to distinguish without the sun
lighting them as they stretched out,

soaring to a limitless horizon

until the bird was so hope filled and joy filled

it had no choice but to open it's mouth

and let out the song

collecting there, too large a thing

to contain inside it's bird body frame,
shaky, small boned, but with promises

of where,

of where,

of where
it's determined

wings would take it tomorrow.
"Oh well at least the bird can sing"
reasoned the man, not remembering
that he had not heard the bird sing
ever since he had brought it home
and made it his.
"Oh well,
at least the bird is with me"
reasoned the man not seeing
it was only the bird's eyes

that continued to blink out at what
it could not believe it was not seeing.

-XOXO,