What Is Freedom?

FLIGHT

In dreams I climb through glassy air in flight

I rise.
Above my parents’ sycamore I swim
and drift in joyful sunlit lift,
my feet
brush leafy canopies. Below, the land –
my parents’ garden, Tom’s house, orchard – pass,
then flowing meadow,
crossed by walls of stone,
the fertile patchwork quilt of grey and green.

Some swallows arc around me in my dream
six or seven starlings rise,
then join
elated murmuration, winding out
in tight formation;
high in halls of light
I soar and sing
and swim through air in flight.