Here is a nest and it is good

Provides shelter, well-stocked with food.

Here is the sky and it is great

As, to most birds, the sky is fate.

There’s a difference twixt an albatross and a hen.

The latter can get respite anywhere, anywhen

Grounded, there’s no danger of exhaustion; one can rest

While the albatross coasts seas, puts endurance to test.

Though I wish to take to the air

I am scared of falling from there.

Flight brings me dreams of plummeting

Leaving the nest is suffering.

I’m still quite chickenish, clinging to familiar soil:

I’m baffled by notions of never-ending toil

How am I meant to take off, forever stay aloft

Soar decades till I’ve retired to a landing soft?

How do birds feel ready to fly

Knowing to falter is to die?

Crashed from having beat wings too young

Flight hums to me where it once sung.

From my perch, I cower, scared of inclement weather

Though my roost is unstable, how is the sky better?

I hop by reflex to higher branches of my tree

My wings mark me borne for open sea, not fenced-in lea.

An albatross is not a hen

What I can now, I couldn’t then.

Feathers fluffed full, I catch a breeze

Then, by instinct, I’m overseas.

Labour is not tiresome when it makes you feel free

Sans nest, delight lives in moving independently

We taste the sky each our way, be it a leap or shove

A different kind of safety is toil to rise above.