The Wing/Steel Seagull

The wing is solid, determined.
It pulses with its own mechanical heartbeat, and I can practically hear it panting,
its metal underbelly clenching in anticipation.
Unnoticed on the surface, of course.
(wish the goddamn sun would shine a little brighter)

We back up like a wind-up racecar, and, predictably, we start to shoot forward into the brisk Cincinnati air. I stare at the wing, feel it grab hold of the winds beginning to kick like a frightened stallion, feel the steel rumble with feral intensity, unwavering, poker-faced. Yet, I can see that smile in the curve of the wing, that glint of adrenaline reflected as a diamond of sunshine in my eyes.
And as the steel crescent beside me grunts with ecstasy of the hunt, we

PUSH

          our roller-skate feet, leaping onto the back of the great Animal that the wing has so effortlessly tamed.

---

I swear to you, there's a lake in the sky. There's a great white iceberg that traps his reflection beneath an infinite sheet of waterglass, and when you bend over to try to see your own reflection you can see just how deep the water goes, how mountainous her bed is.

The sky has an ocean too. But it's violent, much more violent than ours, and its best to ride the steel gull above the rolling, white waves, rather than to tempt the fates by traveling by boat.

There are great walls of China here, built by the starving subjects of Zeus,
flimsier than a soggy napkin.

And there are acres of frozen tundra,
a wasteland friendly to no eskimo
(with or without wings).



And there's the fog.

And there's the cloud-to-sky horizon, cool as the silver palm of the veiled moon
and sweet as baby's breath.

And there's the face of Jack Frost beginning to materialize on the blisteringly cold surface of your window, a thousand beautiful shards of sky in the shape of a skull.


And there's solitude.







Here, there are enough shades of blue to bring tears to your eyes.

_{(feel them freeze on your cheek)}