that [broken winged bird poem]

in some of us
imagination
lives feverishly
in others it is wan
worn down
by the demands of every
weary day: no longer
what we dream and do
but what we must be

ask yourself:
are you still the same
person you were
when you were a teenager?

if you aren't,
what's become of
her dreams?

the older I get
the more I realize
that the little poem they had us learn
-- the one about the bird
-- the one with the broken wing
-- the one who couldn't fly
in junior high
was written
by and for
forty year olds and fifty year olds,
not the teenagers we were

and the older my child gets
the more I realize
that the hope that fed that poem
-- broken winged bird poem --
to us
was the fervent, baseless hope
that we would not
grow up to be
who we are now