Poem: Wild Bird
By: Linda M Crate
other women
are graceful and thinner
than i
swans floating in the air shimmering
in all their beauty
perfectly content with their
apparent beauty,
but i have many windows
open and closed
some boarded shut and some forced open;
my beauty isn’t chiseled and defined
by quickness or lightness of step
never been what you consider a proper lady
too sensitive for most
plop down on seats and i’m clumsy
as a newborn deer
tripping over soliloquies and dreams—
i see them judge me from their
gilded cages,
but it’s always the prettiest birds they kill;
wild things like me have a fighting
chance of remaining untamed.