Featherweight

When the strength you need

becomes all of the strength

you've given...

When unexpected loss

Takes your breath away

too...

When you balance 

All of your own weight

on your own 

two feet

without feeling

push or pull...

Flight may occur

When your vision is blurred

from speed, you see,

Direction is irrelevant

to destination.

When arrival is relative

to departure

and landing is only

One stop

of many...

It starts to feel 

Easier to open 

Both arms, wings 

and just soar...

A rough legged hawk soars over Seedskadee NWR, looking for its next meal. Photo Credit: Tom Koerner/USFWS via Wikimedia Commons.

How clear up here

To be free

whether winds

push or pull

To Be sure

one cannot fall...

Further

Delight lies

in the details.

The Raven and the grasshopper

see you seeing them

Alone

and altogether such...

simplicities and cycles

remain

Elemental.

Artwork by Louis Agassiz Fuertes, 'Nightjar in flight' c. 1910-1914 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Whyte light

Lean out,
breathe in.
Step off,
take it in.
You will fly
they praise.
My wings must be wet.

Whyte, white light
from acme to abyss
this mountainous
poet dragon
echoed across
my blood river valleys

and Up
I aimed a gaze.
My eyes-directing
my eyes where I wished-

Like the flower
happy to bloom,
in bloom
noticing the ever-changing
view.

Left with these notions

what must come down?
Come down
what must,
what must...



Painting by Thomas Moran, 'Mountain of the Holy Cross', c. 1890 in [Public domain].

Half-wit Habitat

They came to me too,
just like you, the birds and the water,
serenity instead of sheep.

Yet the insistent migration,
predictably precisely on
Time,
became
beyond mesmerising.

Understanding holding your breath,
sonar is like sleep talk, let me translate,
Chosen few.

Including the enduring frigate flyer
over vast continents of saltwater-
suspended
with nary a place to land and nest.

A rare sight does not make it fantasy,
pteridactyls still soar
for weeks and weakly
catch flying fish in the skyway,
Survivor skills.

Flocks and pods abound,
we in the middle-straddled here
gasping for air, too bloated to fly
and in one eye,
masterminds
one half at a time.
Meanwhile, we Sleep
grazing.




Painting by François Boucher, Arion on the dolphin, (1748) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Olive to Fly

The ship sailed West on Sunday

The wind was too wild on Wednesday

Our arrow plane rips the paper sky,

severing space for itself, its edges unfrayed.

Flapping fabric waves airily

sewing smooth loop-di-loops

prepared with packed parachutes.

Cruising like a Caddy,

on the wide open highway of the sky.

Her name-I love,

“Olive” was her name.

Born in barnstormer days,

used in crop-dusting ways,

coasting through a Navy phase.

Aloft over land and sea,

thirty owners later,

she took us up for a spin.

By plane of bands, poles and holes

Her martini body knows the sky.