From My Cage to Yours

Here we stand, you and I,
aching souls sentenced to life
in these frail cages of tissue and bone
behind walls that began as fences—
boundary-markers over which to meet—
but that now only imprison our selves.
And within, we are lonely.

Here we stand, cage to cage,
and very ordinary-looking cages, too,
but for the windows through which pass
the elements—light and air and sound—
in endless but tentative stream
of shadows, breaths and echoes
bespeaking something more within.
But without, we are unheard.

Here we stand, two apart
longing to reach out across this space
littered with remnants of much unsaid, unknown:
emotion, experience, expectation;
but unable, it seems, to open doors
that, hardly aware, we locked so long ago—
and now they are stiff, and we are stuck
within these familiar cages,
waiting out our life sentence, self-imposed.

"Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in . . ." (Revelation 3:20, KJV)