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With a grace and power they all wish they had
The beat of your wings bowed every head on the train
This stiff morning, your wild, patternless trail over their
Cold and hoary manes the very transit of folly.
They risk beyond measure, beyond reason, driven by
Sheer adventure, pioneering where neither lark nor
Even pigeon flew. Black and swift, almost invisble,
You made them all look up and note your
August presence, a slim streak passing
Once, like a fiscal opportunity that melted seconds later
And left them all regretting that they didn't see it coming.
With all their radar up, antennae out,
Their faxes lined up, the RSS feeds feeding them
Like greedy eaglets, they miss so little,
But did not expect you,
Flying under their radar, over their heads, between their aisles.
And yet like all exuberance on this
Transient track, on this carnival trolley,
The dénouement is equally as swift and more than bitter.
Your two-second flight,
Shorter than that fledgling volley of Orville
Wright's, terminated
Against the bright pane
Of the next car.
And with the quiet thud of a venture gone flat,
How you dropped, a bad stock-tip, to the corrugated
Platform on which no one is permitted to ride.
But how much better, that flight of one second and a half,
Driven, as we all are by the sting of fear,
Than to do as we do daily, worn down and
Slowly ground by both Nature and Man,
Staring endlessly, mindlessly, compulsively, into Blackberries;
Chromed in their hands, bright with a 2-inch backlit pane,
The inviting portal to the rich, dark world beyond.
9.01.08, 10.20.11
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