Les Wicks

 

ASCENT

It's a click in the head,
a shunt in the marshalling yard as carriages come apart,
small ruptures
in the weeds of ganglion.
Then I am flying.

Like a surfboard
but less devious turbulence
no chafe
or clutter of the tribe.
The air supports
& insinuates.

No flapping of imagined wings
or contraptions that ordered souls can fabricate.
This is simply me
without the gravity,
habits of the feet.

A mind let loose -
one part reading atmosphere maps
thermal tracks
the gossip of jetstream.
The rest is gasping with unfixed eyes
at human life made tiny -
a mosaic of colour, congregation.

There is no distance, though touch becomes
a convention dropped along the way.

This is the time most alive
though I suspect I am asleep.
That stuff of bodies & the real
is a debate left
beside friends, money/
the mortgage & pets.

I am waiting
(some steps closer to empty space)
for solar flares, epiphany/
a collaboration of crows.

Or the southerly change to send me
crashing back to flesh.