A beautiful sheet,

thin and fragile, malleable, ductile,

dancing on a sea of chaotic convulsions,

teetering on the edge of destructive misfortunes,

oblivious and ignorant, full of bliss,

hardly there and yet, because of this,

it is.

This is childhood.

These are barren skies, revealing the puffed chest of morning light

These are fleeting waters and racing streams, vessels of life

This is believing without seeing, soaring without flight;

Flying with liberty at the beak and captivity at the hind

That is, until wings are broken and feathers plucked, 

and the short-lived flight of the bird ends in a cloud of dust

and dawn darkens to dusk 

on the beautiful sheet

which, no longer delicate or weightless,

is drawn of its life and into the gaping darkness below,

where both the sheet and the flightless fowl are laid to rest

and what was once hardly there is now not at all.

This is adulthood.