Notes About The Poem
Humans dream of flying, but can they withstand the brutal physical and psychological cost of breaking evolutionary boundaries to achieve self-powered human flight?
An Ocean of Forced Air
The ground recedes. The ancient tether snaps.
He stands alone upon the highest shelf,
A creature remade fiercely from himself,
While somewhere deep inside, his old life cracks.
He tests the span: full thirty feet of sail,
Hollowed and white, a lattice braced with air.
He fills expanded lungs with alpine prayer,
And steps into the howling of the gale.
The first down-stroke is agony and fire.
The massive keel-bone wrenches at his chest;
He wonders if this curse was worth the quest,
Or if he’s driven by a fool's desire.
The deep shoulder pulleys snap tight,
Yanking the heavy primaries aloft.
The air, which once felt vaporous and soft,
Becomes a solid wall of granite might.
He sinks a foot, two feet—the canyon yawns,
And terror takes him, sudden, sharp, and cold.
Is this the end of everything I hold?
Then catching on a rising thermal wave,
He climbs into the most golden of morning dawns.
With toothless jaw set firm against the blast,
And fused spine holding straight against the wind,
He leaves the walking, heavy world behind,
Forgiving all the ghosts that held him fast.
He sweeps his broad and hollow-boned array,
Banking a shoulder down to carve the gale.
The fused and anchored wing-tip flexes pale,
Spiraling upward through the blinding spray.
He pulls his primary flight feathers tight,
Slicing the vortex of a thundercloud.
With wingtips tucked, he yells a challenge loud,
A lonely god against the fading light.
Below, the valley wakes in sudden fear.
The people cluster on the dusty floor;
They see a shadow blocking out the door,
And curse the very thing they used to cheer.
They point their heavy fingers at the cloud.
He looks below and feels a sudden chill—
The isolation of the highest hill.
A thousand voices rise into a roar,
Before his piercing cry subdues the crowd.
The landing zone approaches, swift and fast.
He tilts his fused and rigid hips to brake;
The massive air-sacs burn, his tendons ache,
As thermal updrafts vanish at the last.
His reinforced and braced lower leg strikes the crest.
The shockwaves echo through his hollow frame;
The folded wings collapse to hide his shame,
A broken man, but sovereign in his chest.
No longer flapping blindly through the gale,
He learns to read the thermal columns high.
To flap is death; he mimics birds that sail,
And lets the hot air lift him to the sky.
The landing taught him bones of hollow glass
Will shatter if he runs the runway down.
He learns to flare his wings above the grass,
And drop like stone upon the mountain crown.
The rushing headwind choked his gasping throat,
An ocean of forced air he could not spend.
He times his breath to match the wings afloat,
And makes the blinding storm become his friend.
Post Comments
Poetrysoup is an environment of encouragement and growth so only provide specific positive comments that indicate what you appreciate about the poem. Negative comments will result your account being banned.
Please
Login
to post a comment
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a
Premium Membership.
