A COMMON SPARROW

 

To be deft means unleashing

shackles of technique into a

swarm of skill, pure

 

abandonment of steps, you

lift off into air, a winged

pilot of your own mind,

 

coasting, held aloft by

brain cells with advanced degrees,

translating languages long gone,

 

calling out messages from the dead.

This is freedom: to stare into

darkness and see the flashes,

 

understand patterns before

they emerge; to relinquish

predictions in spite of evidence.

 

I have no 5-year plan; today

presents pressure enough to

catch thought in its incessancy,

 

to negotiate hostage deals

from inside my head—mostly a laughing

matter for the pirates—and decode

 

drum beats heard from across

valleys. They all sound like warnings,

but those ecstatic, thrumming hands

 

might be announcing the birth

of a child, newest member of the

tribe, who will carry on the ways.

 

Whose ways am I living out

in my ceremonially-deprived

existence? My people left

 

home, inhospitable to their kind,

for a hunch that anything

would be better than it, and

 

here I am, a common sparrow, who

knows how to fly with

no idea how it learned.