flying

  • Learning to Fly Without Loving to Crash

    I can’t imagine going back
    To dodging the booby traps
    After flying low to scope the landscape
    After scraping treetops on the descent

    It’s been a while since the last crash landing
    Losing bearings, instruments failing
    Natives rescuing with bucket brigades
    I loved when gravity took over

    When I signed the armistice confession
    The civilians ceased to starve and burn
    In justice prevailed the open hearts
    Into the wild blue yonder they ran

    Now I’m left with this sensation of falling
    Not in any particular direction
    It’s more of a freedom pitched flight
    Leveling to the upright postures

    I’m learning to fly again
    Without the weightless flex
    Without a net
    Without the deep love of crashing

  • Fly Fly Brooklyn Birdie

    Thundering upstairs neighbor
    Where are you going?
    Walking back and forth
    From midnight to morning.

    Your footsteps betray
    A sense of unease
    A life’s work undone
    Malignant ambition.

    Is it a family dynamic
    That’s left you pacing the miles?
    Your mother perhaps who lives downstairs.
    A man burdened as someone’s child.

    Someday you’ll fly lighter than air
    Not even stomp up the stairs
    To the third floor, one farther away
    Then glide off the rooftop and soar.

    Or perhaps your mother may drag you
    Flapping and squawking
    Up to the top of the nest
    And fling you out over the streets of Brooklyn.
    If she knows what’s best.