Aloft

(Fifteen minutes in a microlight plane)

Like an imitation Icarus, wings strapped to
my back, the ground leaving me in the
arms of the wind, the wind tapping glass,
searching for frailty. I look for a god at 
this altitude, as if he should be waiting 
as I rise towards him. How much of this, 
I wonder, is a test of faith: he can pull 
me higher, knock me down — mortality
has different parameters when the birds
are below your feet and the clouds signal
with their hands. A city is not a city from
up here. When you float like an uncertain
word looking for a sentence. When you
become the liminal space through which
time must pass on its way back to you. The
black kite has an orange glow, trees are
green shrubs, trunks retracted, people,
as we draw closer, are outlines with no
face. A child’s sketchbook. I am six. I sign 
my name at the bottom of a crayon sky.
Outside my door, sparrows peck at grains,
I walk towards them, they teach me to fly.

#Poetry

A poem from Nov 2023