Listening to Birds

by Lynn White

She asked me why

caged birds sing

when home

is a prison

or

it looks that way

to us.

I couldn’t tell her,

not for sure.

She asked me why

humming birds hum,

if it was their song,

I said it was a work sound

made by their wings

a sound of struggle

and survival,

a sound you can hear,

made by a movement so fast

you can’t see it.

So nothing is as it seems.

”Do they still sing?

I must listen more carefully,” she said.