Freedom, Empirical

You shall build empires: testaments
to human will and spirit, flung up
from the surface of a tired Earth,
whose gravity cannot contain you.
You shall paint upon the canvas of time
bright visions and marvels, difficult
even to imagine—only you shall:
will overcome, triumph, create. But then
in victory, surrounded by vast success,
how shall you compare to the bird
who is free, sitting on an electric wire
whose purpose she cannot divine;
perching on the distant pinnacle
of a towering mansion she did not build;
mounting on a wind she did not blow,
to drift in places humans only dimly know.
She does these things on her own behalf,
drifting to drift, eating to eat, laying eggs
because she must. Will you, then, envy
this mindless freedom, someday—
accomplished, victorious, and yet entombed
by the soaring walls of your own triumph?
Or can you balance, with a feather’s delight
these opposite things: the weight of triumph
and the ease of thin-boned flight?

November 2019