Caged Bird Poem by Areese Woodson

Caged Bird



Gentle cottoned brushes,
A wink of bold shine;
In one eye paints Earth a shade of singing purple-orange.
Across the other, are warm writings of verses,
Opening like eyes, when morning peaks through an Earthly corner.
A bird flies to and from portraits and poems as he pleases.
Smart and open minded as sunshine;
Reflects through moon shadows;
Sways in blowing winds who play in the tree's hairs,
Poems speak in one.
He sits on a cozy chair, while reading lyrics of burning wood and sipping on a steaming lake.
Richest creature to live.
Sees no begging.
Only how free he is,
Resting in soil,
Listening to growing roots.

As storm clouds begin to mingle,
He can no longer fly to the shores.
It walks
And approaches from behind a tree.
Feathers must be watched.
Someone's coming.
When corpse of his kind spread across sheets,
He is introduced to a new literature.
A fog smothers mother of art.
Kingdoms see a presentiment of things to come,
Watching the solar eclipse.
Land gets smaller and smaller.
Bars wrap around.
He's caged.
'Incomplete' canters his beak as he lays in the crib.
He was free.
Free as the pieces of a work of abstract;
Free as fiction;
Free as sunshine;
Free as nightly shade;
Free as the words of a concrete poem, shaping wind;
Free as a mind;
Free as the water of an ocean;
Free as the outside,
Free as a bird.

Breathing chains -
Fresh from the belly of a dove.
Freedom is the snow melting in clutches of sun.
He's trapped!
Trapped like desert weeds;
Trapped like steam;
Trapped like ice;
Trapped like nonfiction;
Trapped like fire;
Trapped like a shadow under gloomy clouds;
Trapped like the people to whom this poem is for;
Trapped like a grain of sand on a still day;
Trapped like a tree;
Trapped like the the inside,
Trapped like a caged bird.

Memories of that ocean, washing through his ears wander lost in mind.
Lost as a stranded traveler on a desert field.
(Though a dove has offered to lead him.)
Something has drowned.
Little does he know, that there is a trail at the bottom of that ocean that can lead him back.
But even if - one day it happens to walk across his knowledge,
He's trapped.
So how will he ever find it?

POET'S NOTES ABOUT THE POEM
The bird is a symbol.
COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Khairul Ahsan 17 January 2019

A poem rather too long, but there are some beautiful lines in it. As for example: 'When corpse of his kind spread across sheets, He is introduced to a new literature'.

0 0 Reply
Leesaan Robertson 14 April 2014

long poem...but nice

0 0 Reply
READ THIS POEM IN OTHER LANGUAGES
Areese Woodson

Areese Woodson

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Close
Error Success