The Caged Bird

I look out the glass doors of my second floor room, and on the neighbor’s porch hangs a cage. It’s black metal, maybe a foot in diameter and two feet high, if that. It sways slowly with the wind. No toys, no mirror. A solitary bar, with a little dish, is all that makes up its structure, and, there the bird is perched. Once in a while, I’ll see it momentarily climb on the side of the cage, just for a second, and then it jumps back to the bar. It chirps, and just as intermittently it twitters, but mostly, it just sits and sits.

I feel such grief for this bird. Born to fly but caged. Meant to hunt but fed. Supposed to mingle with nature but forced to watch aimlessly as other, free birds and creatures soar and roam. The act of caging any being makes my stomach turn. When I see this bird, I feel nauseous. It’s like sorrow retching from my gut.

I think about sneaking over there, quietly, in the night, and setting it free. This, too, feels wrong. Because I know it’s a non-truth that freeing one bird would change this world, this place, where so many humans feel the impetus and right to cage things – fish, bears, humans… a songbird. And, it’s not like I can. There’s dogs and gates and walls and police. Well, of course I can, but the result and repercussions wouldn’t make sense.

If I were to free this bird, they would just cage another one.