A Bird on the Edge of Space

A BIRD ON THE EDGE OF SPACE.

 

Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die,
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams.
For if dreams go,
Life is a barren field
Covered with snow.

         -Langston Hughes

 

 

 The above is a draft written in July of 2013. I think I will finish it today. 

"SHE TOOK THE LEAP 

AND BUILT HER

WINGS ON THE WAY DOWN."  

 

The sign was posted on a house

just a mile down from my home,

in between the Phinney Ridge and Fremont neighborhoods, nailed up

on the wall between two doors of a duplex.  

The duplex still stands, 

the sign long gone, 

as I suspect the tenant who posted it. 

The neighborhoods have changed a bit, the result 

 

of progress and prosperity of industry, and yet, 

strangely, now slightly bled of beauty

and creativity. The folks who live there now

are less likely

 

to pin up a hand painted

piece of wood with the stencil of poesy. 

Dreams still stand, though. 

The arrogance of ambitions, the drive to go up, up, up

is still nestled in the hearts amongst us. 

In me. 

Is it also in you?

Currently, I'm in a tumble of urges

prompted by a lifelong dream. 

Seemingly

I am quite good

 

at failure. Um, failures.

Also, seemingly, I've become

convulsively, amazingly persistent in the drive

to keep dreaming.

Keep going. 

 

It's what makes this life switch the mundane

repetitive acts of eating, shitting and sleeping

to the divine push to make rainbows out of piss storms. 

Girl Icarus, 

you were never so good 

 

as the false belief that you could 

out shine your wings

in the orbits of the sun.

 

   

 

             - RQ Bella