Free by Holly Day

We put the small wire cage in the car next to my daughter’s car seat
where she can talk to the little purple-headed finch huddled at the bottom
while we drive it back out to the field where we first found it
lying in the snow, unable to move, almost dead.
We tried denying the little foundling a name, since we knew
we were just going to set it free once it was well enough,
but our daughter named it “Happy”
because, she said, he was going to be so happy we found him
he was going to be so happy living with us.

We get to the park and pull into the lot
and my daughter says something about Happy wanting to stay with us
and I have to tell her that birds want to live with birds,
especially wild birds, this is his home
and his friends are expecting him.
She wants to carry the cage
so we let her, it looks so big in her tiny hands
she has to use two hands to carry the small cage across the lot.

All the while, the little bird in the cage has been quiet,
hopping back and forth on the newspapered bottom to maintain balance
with the bouncing steps of the little girl
but I can tell he’s looking out through the bars of the cage
at a world he thought he would never see again
I can tell he’s wondering why we’re here.

My daughter sets the cage down on the grass and claws at the cage door
she wants to be the one to open it. I remind her that Happy
is too small for her to try to hold, like I’ve been saying all winter
that all she can do is open the cage door
and wait for the bird to come out on his own. Surprisingly, though,
it only takes a couple of seconds for the bird
to hop on the thin wire of the cage’s doorframe
as though he’s been listening to us
as though he knows exactly what’s expected of him.
“He wants to stay with us!”
says my daughter suddenly, slamming the little door shut
but it’s too late, Happy is already gone
a flutter of wings into the trees overhead.



Holly Day has been a writing instructor at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis since 2000. Her poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and Harvard Review, and her newest poetry collections are Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing), The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body (Anaphora Literary Press), and Book of Beasts (Weasel Press).