Pacing Poem by Jerome Michael Pindell

Pacing


You enter my cage where bars define my space,
but do you know the floor upon which I walk?

The air I breath crosses barriers as seamlessly
as the danger that you choose entering here.

You know me as I appear to you, pacing,
where each stride within the defining bars

that are my solitude, nurses the inner dissatisfaction,
readying for the conflict to erupt beyond

this isolation. Do you detect my flight,
awaiting the triggering of the taut spring?

The flock's mind seems to float and twist
seamlessly in the air that we share,

yet the bars contain the flight of my form
as my eyes trace the freedom of wings.

Can there be a reaching into my crippled expanse?

Only when the enclosure releases my soul,
and dust is left for the prints of others.