Written by Melissa Lemay
Much has been written
about why the caged bird
sings;
but poetry about the person
looking at the bird
in the cage
is much more obscure.
The
agony
of watching
as a bird who can’t fly
further
than 40 square feet*
is restrained
from the wind,
the sea,
touch,
salt
of the earth—
they can’t kiss,
they can dance,
but only
in their cage—
from
the sun,
the grass
on the lawns,
and only
fed by hand
out of trays is
immense. It
encompasses
one’s being and
pulls your heart
on
a string
right into that cage
with them—
that pathetic little bird,
whose sole purpose in life
was to fly,
eat insects,
perhaps pollinate
flowers
and
move seed.
And now—
they are imprisoned,
and they
didn’t
even kill
any other birds.
*the minimum square footage required by statute in certain states for a prison cell
Text © Melissa Lemay
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Thank you!
Melissa, hi–Your poems here are astounding. They are so open, so detailed. The expositions are helpful, because I know you a little and now know you a little more. I read the contrapuntal, first one part then the other, then everything together. Such a strong theme of passion in both ways, unleashing it and then being frustrated by it. From “A Sestina,” I will be thinking about the person addressed for a good long while and also, maybe more, about the person speaking. And as I read the poem about the beholder of the cage, I was put in mind of “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” by Adrienne Rich and the story “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell. (These works are often anthologized.) Both works deal with artful things (a bird, tigers on a screen) that represent imprisonment. And you’re right—the poem is right—cages work as cages on both sides. The poem about Kiwanis Loop turned out to have me thinking of the Kiwanis Park near where I grew up in Pittsburgh. There were hills to trudge and trails and rock ledges. Also a creek with all the creatures named. The initials, though, would have been something new to me and could have been a bittersweet memento as they are in the poem. Such telling work, overall. Moving and even piercing.–Christopher
Better to live as that bird, trapped inside its own, ignorant, bliss of not being free, that to be on the outside, looking into that cage, seeing how the bird, keeps on, flapping those wings, and, can’t escape…