CAPTIVITY
The light dove, cleaving the air
in her free flight . . .
Kant
It’s about feeling free within the limits,
Without knowing what the limits are.
It’s the way I feel each day, and you do too—
Something I mean to talk to you about,
But that meanders off before I can.
It’s what it’s like to live in an illusion
That continues forever, knowing all the while
That it’s ordinary, insignificant and real—
Like Matt Bevis on his mother’s complaint
About his captive canaries in the cellar:
“But they’re in cages, Matthew.” “Yes,”
I said, “but they’ve got lots of room.”
I remember Rogers Albritton sitting in Riegelmann’s
In 1985, writing about the will as necessarily free,
And how that means there’s no such thing. He dropped that
In the final version, but I still think it’s true:
There’s all the room in the world for everything
That’s actually in the world, but what isn’t in the world
Are these “free bloody birds” we think we are,
Telling stories to ourselves and pretending that they’re true.
The truth lies underneath them, where it can’t be seen
And doesn’t matter. I like to think that what I can’t remember
Isn’t real, which is a way of living in the present, or forever.
My life feels continuous, with no sense of limitation
Or an ending, which is its whole point in a way:
There’s no one like me it says to no one in particular,
As though it were almost real, and went on forever.