“I want to fly,” says Michael.
“I want to be a bird!”
Papa felt his regret,
the heaviness of his own body.
Why was the wing
made only for them?
Why was the imagination
confined to a cage
but allowed to see so far?
“Michael,” I replied,
“you already fly in your mind.
You are in the sky with the birds.
You are their invisible wings,
their companion.”
And Michael looked into the distance
of his nose.
He did not know his hearthstone
from the sparrows.
He was not a sea gull.
I saw the fledgling of an eagle
with the immensity of heaven
inside him.
That when time comes
he will fly
where no bird can fly,
see,
what no bird can see.
Planets and countries,
migrations of angels,
but for one question
I have no answer,
why was he not
made into a sparrow?