At first I thought I was I born to fly.
Flung myself into the jet-stream,
leaped off cliffs
hard when immediate take-off
was not my birthright.
Studied current affairs.
Fashioned wings. Flapped and
flapped and flapped with all the effort stipulated.
Ripped and injured muscles;
the hollows of my chest sorely weakened.
Crashed more times than I know.
Newsreels show clips of the more elaborate.
Audiences giggle at the audacity,
Overwrought failures, highly designed.
I wish, like the Wright Brothers,
I could invent a wind tunnel,
test ambition in miniature,
safe from full-scale miscalculations,
and the hazardous gaze of curiosity seekers.
Have not entirely given up
that one day
it will all assemble into momentum.
The air of scoffing hisses providing lift
for my own Bernoulli principle.