In line 9 of The Prelude, Wordsworth announces that he is "now free, / Free as a bird to settle where I will." I'm wondering if he's the last person writing in English who has gotten away with using "free as a bird" in a poem. There's an Elvis song about being "free / As a bird in a tree," but of course pop singers can say anything. If you would like to do some research on that bird line, let me know what you find out because I myself am not in the mood to look anything up. I'm too busy sitting in my blue chair, mulling fruitlessly over WW's freebird, snuffling into a Kleenex, and thinking that there's nothing like a head cold to make a person feel not free as a bird, in a tree or otherwise. Outside a chickadee is singing high-low, high-low, high-low, ad infinitum; and I do know I need to hoist myself out of this chair and go feed the rooster, who is grouchy because I put a net over his yard to keep him from scratching up my garden. I'm a little bit sorry I had to cage him: he so enjoyed being a freebird, and he was so handsome, strutting royally amid the devastation of my lettuce crop. Mostly, however, I'm not too sorry.