Trapped

He came about

Lumbering in a way surprisingly eloquent

For a 300 pound man.

I’ve seen him do high kicks for the hell of it,

Cartwheels to show off the poise of his hulking frame.

Always with dirty, tattered shirts, disheveled hair that is falling out from front to back but he doesn’t cut it and it grows shaggy and ridiculous looking.

Working too much. Too too much. Every night and every weekend he puts his name on the overtime list.

He stood there in his grapplers stance,

Ready to pounce, thick gloves on his hands. He was looking passed me.

A sparrow was perched on the welding booth there. He said it was dying of exhaustion.

Sure enough, as he got close the bird swooped up and floated down to the oil stained floor, jumped again and couldn’t make it off the ground.

And I realized how awful the little bird looked. Trapped in this terrible building, slowly draining it of life, enticed by a masquerading prospect.

Perhaps it was a light that shone through an open door just at the right moment as it passed from tree to tree outside in the great wide open world of possibility, a light that seemed to indicate briefly far more than what it could ever prove to be.

A bird’s half life in here is a pitiable thing.