Flying Just Off The Ground
It took me years of training
to move my legs like this,
gliding over the granular
on long feet with curved width,
to make my legs flail left and right,
my upper half stock-still,
balancing and countering
so I won’t take a spill,
I’m going about forty-five,
but I’ve got no steel cage,
just long blades cutting through the white,
so long as it behaves.
Gravity is now my plaything,
as much as I am hers,
cross a mile in two minutes,
a small grace I have earned,
the blur of speed makes its own wind,
downs out the weaker noise,
just a fast bubble around me,
that calmness I enjoy.
Gray mercury says twenty-three,
but I don’t feel a thing,
you really only note the chill
when you have stopped moving,
my weight becomes a shifting ball,
it flows, then it slams home,
at other times it’s zero-G,
a feeling few have known.
Winter-brown trees are flashing past,
guiding the broad, white trail,
they remain still, branches don’t wave,
this time I am the gale,
it’s rare to find a day like this,
where crowds don’t slow you down,
when you can streak across the snow,
flying just off the ground.
Copyright ©
David Welch
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