With hazel eyes taut,
your soul sped forward,
across the mottled sky,
chasing eagles from their planes,
until amid a volumeless blue,
an impossible flight was made.

It seemed the pair of hammered wings,
which held aloft those handsome hands,
had grown out as new and fragile limbs,
yolk sac broken and drying albumin,
in your solo ascent from earth.

I, a one-time grounded and blind mortal, smiled,
to learn of your hungry escape,
from the ancient debt of evolution,
(as from knees to feet to wings),
into the magnificent lure of hanging in god's beard.

Yet still smiling, I confess,
that while your new-borne leaps are spirited,
and free now of any manic fear of failure,
my song has grown quieter,
drying in the signaled sunlight of your eventual home.

Flying—caught singly and aware, you are!
And I, a fledgling too,
must share the sky I thought was mine alone,
and in sharing yield the perils I thought hidden from you,
by earth's enameled gravity.

So winded are my words to you, my once younger brother,
that given I am—
stole from the clouds surrounding us—to your arms,
frightened by mutual flight,
by the natal perils of flying equal.

Ever side by side
my smile reflects the tilt of your wings.
and your smile, our birth.
There is no finer flight than love,
nor uncharted journey, life.

December, 1977

Inspired title of As From Knees to Feet to Wings: Poems to You book,
completed in 1981

Flying painting that accompanies this poem (click image to view larger) ~This painting is not available for purchase