If I could fly like the mockingbird I would
fly away singing in a mocker's voice and
mocking all the sorry earth-bound
non-birds, people wearing worries on
their brows and woven into their wrinkled clothes.
I would soar like the hawk, hocking
worries until they slid from my shoulders
in the slip-stream and fell away, too heavy
for flying. I would not be a bird of sadness;
I would make no nests in people's hair.
I would fly free.
I would live like the phoenix, born not from an
egg but from ashes. I would be born in
ashes and rise from ashes, borne on
a warm wind of fire, and in the end
I would be the fire, and I would die in ashes
and rise again.
I would be a bird of freedom.
