By A Jessie Michael

Caged Birdsong
They stride in graceful rhythm
Qi Pao* fluttering in morning breeze
They swing their cages with gentle sway
Going to Nanjing Park
To bathe in sunshine and breathe fresh air.
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Their feathered friends rise and bend on perches
Flap their wings and stretch muscles.
They are one in movement, master and bird
Lifelong learners each, going to Nanjing Park
To bathe in sunshine and breathe fresh air
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There’s a crowd of cages on every low branch
And sweet birdsong fills the air
Feathered friends chirp and tweet and trill
Outdoing each other; hearts are bursting
Here to bathe in sunshine and breath fresh air
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Old men’s yarns and chortles mingle
With caged birdsong flowing free
A daily short spate of being alive
Voices let loose in cacophony
Bathing in sunshine and breathing fresh air
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Then cages are curtained into darkness
Echoes of birdsong dissipate in the wind
Men in silence swing cages home
To drown in the darkness, and choke in the haze
Of crowded cubicles with no window space
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Weighted
My heart is a kite with a stone on its string
Straining and fluttering to be free
But it is anchored to earth while the wild winds sing
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It longs for new love and youthful flings
It wants to break free, fly over the sea
But my heart is a kite with a stone on its string
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It wonders what the future will bring
When the heart is corralled to what can only be
It is anchored to earth while the wild winds sing
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I was the air beneath the falcon’s wing
I was the joy of sunshine before day’s reality
But my heart is a kite with a stone on its string.
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Sometimes in a dream I feel the old zing
Of our youthful love, my heart’s soaring glee
But it is anchored to earth while the wild winds sing
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The loss is too great, no end to the longing
The fluttering and flittering of fantasy
My heart is a kite with a stone on its string
It is anchored to earth while the wild winds sing.
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*Qi pao – Cheongsam, a dress of Manchu origin.
A. Jessie Michael is a retired Associate Professor of English from Malaysia and a writer of short stories and poems. She has written winning short stories for local magazines and newspaper competitions and received honourable mentions in the AsiaWeek Short Story Competitions. She has worked with writers’ groups in Melbourne, Australia and Suzhou, China. Her stories have also appeared in The Gombak Review, 22 Asian Short Stories (2015), Bitter Root Sweet Fruit and recently articles in Kitaab (2019) and poems and Short story in Borderless (2020). She has previously published an anthology of short stories Snapshots, with two other writers and most recently her own anthology The Madman and Other Stories (2016).
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