Air dancing, air slamming me
Closer toward the ground,
Making me forget
How high I have flown.

Turbulence; my sweet foe
Twisting my wings,
Pushing at my eyes,
And making me gulp
For the very air
That pounds at my chest
And quickens my pulse.

Turbulence, fucking turbulence
Making me plummet,
Turning me from a glider
Into a stone,
I wonder: How many seconds
Are mine until I
Will be smashing
Into the ground?

Turbulence; too much air
All around me;
Not in my lungs,
Not under my wings,
But instead
Twisting, twisting, twisting
Bouncing me to and fro,
Like a crazed puppet
Tangled in its strings.

Turbulence turns me upside down,
Pushes me backward,
Wringing all life out of me,
Forcing me into a midair standstill,
For an eternal moment
Of hellish inertia.

Will I resume defying gravity?
Will I rediscover propulsion?
Can I again triumph over drag?
Will I ever again celebrate
The ecstasy of lift, of knowing
I am gaining, gaining altitude?

My little heart bursts in fear,
My little mind races with contingencies,
My little body fights, flees, freezes
All at once in a crazy destructive dance
As turbulence from within explodes, joining
Turbulence from the sky to erase my aerodynamics;
But still, I make myself flop fly
Without thinking,
Without feeling
Instead just being, trusting this new glide path
That has its own awkward logic.

Somehow, flight is mine again;
I seem to have broken invisible puppet strings
And again bounce and bound
Through the skies
And choose when to land.

I am air dancing,
I am air slamming,
Flailing and flying,
Climbing and diving.
Turbulence laughs at me, it
Appearing from and
Disappearing into
Thin air that flows
All around and within me;
Sky and I are again at peace.

 
© copyright 2016 John David Higham