Flightless Bird, American Boys

How much ground is lost over a lifetime on useless legs, one in front of the other, so fragile and small. Like a glass figurine bird who has lost its way home.  Shuffled here and there in a crowd of patriots.  Easily lost, stepped on.  Dirtied with the mud of their boots.  They're all going the same direction down the sidewalk, non-descript buildings hugging their shoulders.  A sliver of sky peeks between their tops.  But the bird does not know how much or how little of the sky peeks between the buildings, because while the patriots do nothing but crane their necks, point their noses upward, laugh and discuss the rain or the cloudless blue or Apus/Aquila, they cannot ever see him, who passes beneath them and does not look up.