an old one

When I was young, and could not fall asleep at night, I would lie in my bed with my eyes shut tight
And pretend I was soaring outside, through fences, across the yards and streets and over buildings in flight.
A world lit up at that time only by dim streetlights,
the crowded intersections of the daytime now quiet and peaceful.
I could feel all these things in my mind,
live through a sensation of traveling to some far-off place,
flying through the neighborhoods that I knew so well, and no one else could suspect, because at the same time I was lying in bed,
Eyes shut tight, pretending I was asleep.

Until, the next thing I knew, I woke up.
Another cool morning, with a forecast marine layer that burned off some time around noon.
Birds chirping outside, singing melody to whatever was supposed to happen that day.
In Korea, there is an old legend that if the magpie sings outside one’s door,
that person will be blessed with good fortune.
I don’t think I ever heard a magpie sing… or maybe I just don’t know what they sound like.
The only birds I ever heard outside my bedroom window, that I recognized, were crows.
And I would dare say that crows sang.
The other sweet sounds were of unidentifiable species, trilling and warbling and whistling their hearts out.

Sometimes I wish I could sing like a bird,
especially when I have stuff on my heart that I need to get rid of.
I could sing it all away, or if I really needed to escape, I could fly.
Really fly… No more of this pretend-stuff-in-the-middle-of-the-night anymore.
But as my fate is, I’m not a bird. So I must satisfy myself…sigh…
by putting words on paper or sorting them out in my head,
never supposing that they will amount to anything more than a feeding of my wistful imagination.

and with that... off to bed.