Blind Birds
______________by Tatiana Gumucio

I have wondered....
Where were you? What did you do?
.... All that time while I talked to people,
And they talked back to me, too.
While I was laughing and playing
And roaming around free,
It seemed you were always held back.
Why couldn't you let yourself be?

"They" laughed at you, as well.
No reaction ever came from you.
"They" pointed and some of them stared.
Was there nothing you could do?
You lived the life not of a person,
But of something inhuman, something that is less.
Now and then I saw one wire,
But how could that be the cause of your powerlessness?
You were always there, weren't you?
I just chose to ignore; I chose not to see
You - - always kept silent and hurting.
But now your pain has been revealed to me.
Suddenly so many wires spring up,
Encompassing you, before my eyes.
You stare out forlornly from inside your cage.
I can understand and now see the lies.
You are too beaten from struggling.
There are too many wires; they bar you off from life.
"They" and I have built up the wires, though.
Together we maintain the cage and your strife.
In this realization of you, however,
So many things fade and become clear.
Myths - - I've discovered - - and false images are the truths
I had lived by and held so dear.
There are many like you,
And there are also many like us.

I thought you were the sole, different one,
But we all share the same difference.
The cages encompass us all.
They can be torn down, though.
To work at the others,
The cages not our own....
There is the choice we must decide to take.
First, it must be realized.
In coming to finally realize your cage,
My own I have recognized.

 

Painting by Jerry Sneed