What is freedom?

I ponder that question as I see a bird, traversing three dimensions at will.
Soaring, swooping, singing as it chooses.
Pitching on perches with no particular predictability.

I sit and watch,
I sit and watch as this being of magnificence and brilliance,
a being that inspires envy in the minds of the men below.
I sit and watch in this airport awaiting my departure via man's own vehicle of aerial accomplishment,
reflecting on childhood desires of becoming the fragile flyer buzzing above me.

Reality sets in.

This perfection of eons of environmental evolution and spousal selection was not free at all.
Fore as he flew toward each pane,
the panes that so clearly gave sight of the world beyond the windowed walls as something so easily accessible,
he would come to realize its illusion.
Man-made construction had him encapsulated in a new world,
free from predators and freezing,
but it had not freed him to live free.

I sat there observing,
Watching as this bird gazed through the glass.
I imagine him delving deep in the recesses of his mind attempting to extract an escape plan.
A plan that would be foiled by ineptitude and ignorance of the institution in which he was trapped.

Freedom is relative.