Today I lay on my bed and looked over at the alarm. It was an hour before the alarm would go off and darkness still permeated through the window. I had another dream, half awake and half sleeping.
I dreamt I walked into an old antique store with 10 foot ceilings. The door creaked behind me as a little bell announced my entrance. I was surrounded by oriental rugs and antique furniture. There was an old man with wispy white hair and gold spectacles at the carved wooden desk at the back of the store.
The room was now silent except for quiet chirp of a bird. Then I heard another bird, and another but I couldn't see them. The old man looked up above the rims of his glasses and asked me "Boy, are you wondering where the birds are?" "Yes" i replied. He told me "Close your eyes and listen for a few minutes. Then when you are ready- you can open your eyes."
I closed my eyes. I heard listened to the chirps. The sound was so small at first and then I hear more birds and more birds .There were thousand now. I opened my eyes.
I looked around the room again and that is when I noticed the bird cages. The place was filled with bird cages of all shapes, colors, and sizes. Some were fancy and other plain. Some looked broken and others were magnificently beautiful. In each bird cage though was a little yellow canary singing away. The brilliant yellow was in stark contrast with the muted brown colors of the furniture and the rugs.
The old man looked over at me again, and said “ well- what do you think of my place?” “It’s beautiful.” I replied.”
”Good” he said. “this is life.”
With that he disappeared.
Somehow I understood. The human body is like the cage. It comes in different hues, shapes, and levels of brokenness and the bird is like the soul. Every human body has one. You just have to look past the "birdcage" to notice it.
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The Caged Skylark
Gerard Manley Hopkins
AS a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage
Man’s mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells—
That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;
This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life’s age.
Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,
Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells,
Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells
Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.
Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest—
Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest,
But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.
Man’s spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best,
But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed
For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.
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