Finch's Cage
Share Article After seeing Tao I found an Internet cafe and sat outside.
I met a human-bird.
Finch had a yellow chest, red beak and brown feathers. It was outside the plate glass door. It had escaped from its small bamboo cage in the main room.
Someone, perhaps the young mother worried about her wailing infant or her old mother worried about dying alone or her brother worried about dying of boredom had left the cage door open.
Finch was outside. It sang, Where’s my home, what is this beautiful world?
Finch hugged the ground. It saw trees across the street. It saw a blue sky and inhaled clear, clean mountain air. It heard birds singing in trees but it didn’t understand them. Their songs were about nesting, flying, clouds, sky, rain, warm sun, rivers, bark, worms, snails, and melodies of nature’s freedom.
I wondered if Finch would fly away. I hoped so however I knew it was afraid to go. It was obvious.
It lacked real flying experience, where you lift off beating your wings to get up and get going to escape gravity’s weight pulling you down as freedom pulls you up into everything new and exciting reaching an attitude or altitude and you turn glide and relax feeling air beneath your wings. You soar free.
Finch, conditioned to a caged world of perch, food and water looked and listened to the world. This was enough.
Finch retreated from the possibility of freedom and pecked at loose seeds in a narrow crevice below the glass door. It smelled the dark stale room where the cage waited. It needed someone to rescue it.
It sang, Help, Let me in. I want to come home. I’ve been outside and I’ve seen enough. It’s a big scary place. I promise I’ll never try to escape again. I was curious, that’s all, I’ve seen enough. Please let me in.
Finch was amazing in its beauty. Yellow, red, brown, bright-eyed in its small alert aloneness.
An old woman came out, trapped it in a purple cloth and returned Finch to its cage. She closed the bamboo door and snapped the latch shut.
Did you learn your lesson little bird, she whispered.
Finch sat on its perch, had a long cool drink of water singing, Thank you now I am truly happy.
The old woman didn’t understand this language, muttered under her breath about inconvenience and shuffled down a long dark hallway to kill a chicken for lunch.
