On Keeping Secrets

*This month our prompt was "Secrets."  I wrote the second poem first, and then on my way to Writer's Group, I was sitting in my car in bumper to bumper traffic, thinking about secrets and wrote this one:

Secrets
are
wild birds
caged,
beating wings
against
the bars
bloodying their beaks
for freedom.

Or they plead
quietly
for release
even
if only
for a minute,
bargaining...
promising...
to return.

But once let
go,
the cage
is open.
No matter
how hard
we try
to put
them back,
we can't.

They are
free
and now
the bars
 are ours
alone.

kathi