Flight

At Aarhus Festival, September 1988
Castle and sailing ship stir and quiver,
ready to float into the middle distance.
Enfolding them, huge bat wings
fall upwards, nudging my shoulders.
The breeze hones to a finer edge
its ambiguity as, slowly, without tremor,
a sole yacht crosses
that watery gap in the forest.
Above, a plump eagle dips and climbs,
then an eagle-man, his trousers shaking
as if in mirth
at each flex of a finger.
Harlequined moon, red-and-green rubik cube,
rear up against unpatterned blue;
a cloud that cannot rain
bobs like a cork through sunlight.
Now a woman's legs and hips swivel pinkly
among these apparitions, heavenly and unheavenly —
icons that ride the wind,
rhythmic as dolphins,
tethered like that small paper diamond
to the hand of someone releasing
and tugging at infinity —
skin never more alive
to the pressure of air, feet never more
certainly planted on grassy earth.
There, small children weave
towards some bright image,
or veer with the momentum of simply leaving.
Shakily alone, they pause to smile back
at circles of watchers,
hovering between freedom, rescue,
then continue the dance,
speeding headlong into grass,
or — unfaltering, unfallen —
glide as if on flawless wings.