Birds

With hands that flutter like trapped birds, she sees
only the bars of her slow-rusting cage
each time she looks up, searching for the sky.

Preferring to look down and see the birds
still trapped, there, in her lap. Her dress is pretty,
a blue-green field with flowers; red and gold.
A meadow she can run in, forever.

She can escape across that open ground
away from here, to chase those birds in flight
across the endless blue-green meadow, thick
with flowers, red and gold. As free, at last,
as any bird could ever want to be.