Why
Interned -Interred
I kid you not, it’s only the difference of one leg of the n being shortened,
and that’s no difference at all.
Buried alive!
Why do you screech when you fly,
is it for anger or joy?
Why do you hang upside down from a branch,
are you gymnastic or lazy?
Why do you talk back to your keepers,
O Cocky,
to copy,
or mock’ry?
Why do you glare at my camera
through that square of confining steel,
you splendid sulphur-crested white
cockatoo?
Why?
Why do you protest, you interred interned detainees?
Life in that cage is better than death in the maws of a shark
at sea.
.
Why do we confine other beings?
Why
above all
do we hold children in confinement
not prisoners but detainees
(in the laundered political speak of our new century)?
Children, like birds, need to fly free
to explore the possibilities of their promise.