Anyone who has been a guest of the state at the Anchorage Correctional Center is aware of the dozens of paper airplanes hanging in the ceiling bars below the skylight roof of the gym, some of them dating back to the facility’s construction. While the engineer in all of us may marvel at the skills applied to achieve such feats, there is also the matter of the spirits soaring above the misery that immediately called to my mind the caged bird Maya Angelou speaks of.

If Ms. Angelou’s words bring tears to yours eyes (as they do to mine each time I read them) then think, when you next read them, of the souls abandoned to those sorry institutions, the cretins who fail to adequately fund those facilities, the systemic failure that our correctional paradigm represents,

And do something.

Caged Bird, by Maya Angelou

A free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream till the current ends and dips his wing in the orange sun rays and dares to claim the sky. But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage can seldom see through his bars of rage his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing. The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom. The free bird thinks of another breeze and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn and he names the sky his own. But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing. The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom. Copyright Credit: Maya Angelou, “Caged Bird” from Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing? Copyright © 1983 by Maya Angelou. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Source: The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (Random House Inc., 1994)