Author's Reading (requires RealPlayer)

They were always my metaphor for life:
Airfoils curving wind over leading edges,
reveling in the lift from below,
the sudden release from heaviness. Mine,
the century humans escaped gravity.

Fairy terns soaring in columns of light
reveal their design, their shadow bones
through fire-shimmered feathers.
Wings move the planet, fan the trade winds
on their way, cool the savage sun enough
to grant us a long reprieve.
Wings let us bargain with moonlight
on the bias of darkness.

I crashed in a glider once.
Seeing with osprey eyes those moments
before earth claimed me, seeing
the great curved sweep of heaven seamlessly
welding all we are to all we aren't,
I flew again, tamed my fear,
Put it to work like fuel to stay aloft.

And I know
this cold-white gull at my feet,
this found art, broken in last night's gale,
knew jubilance at its height.
And never regretted its wings.

                        --CALIFORNIA QUARTERLY, 1998