Flight
by April
They tell me the secret to flying
is to jump and not hit the ground.
And then they laugh.
Others tell me that unaided flight,
a Peter-pan sort of freedom,
is impossible.
We are too heavy, we have no wings,
we are too much weighed down
and then they nod definitively.
But I look up at the flying things,
a moonlit moth,
a sun dappled sparrow,
and bumble bees that seem entirely too big
to be doing so.
I am not definitive
and I am not laughing.
I am thinking,
and what I am thinking is this:
we are thinking too much.
Flight is not a thing of the earth.
Flight is a thing of the soul.
It is beyond the pull of gravity-
It defies men and mocks their laws.
Flight is joy, a pure letting go.
It is not gravity or weight that holds us down,
but our own doubts.
It is not wings we need,
but a forgetting.
Yet if this is flight, then
it is impossible,
for we are creatures of what we know.
We could not obtain this freedom
because we would not want to.
We cannot let go.
We do not need to miss the ground,
but our own hearts and our own minds.
If we let it all go,
held nothing back,
then we would find
Flight.
There we would find
Freedom.
I nod definitively.
I laugh softly.
I look up into the emptiness of space,
and sigh.
is to jump and not hit the ground.
And then they laugh.
Others tell me that unaided flight,
a Peter-pan sort of freedom,
is impossible.
We are too heavy, we have no wings,
we are too much weighed down
and then they nod definitively.
But I look up at the flying things,
a moonlit moth,
a sun dappled sparrow,
and bumble bees that seem entirely too big
to be doing so.
I am not definitive
and I am not laughing.
I am thinking,
and what I am thinking is this:
we are thinking too much.
Flight is not a thing of the earth.
Flight is a thing of the soul.
It is beyond the pull of gravity-
It defies men and mocks their laws.
Flight is joy, a pure letting go.
It is not gravity or weight that holds us down,
but our own doubts.
It is not wings we need,
but a forgetting.
Yet if this is flight, then
it is impossible,
for we are creatures of what we know.
We could not obtain this freedom
because we would not want to.
We cannot let go.
We do not need to miss the ground,
but our own hearts and our own minds.
If we let it all go,
held nothing back,
then we would find
Flight.
There we would find
Freedom.
I nod definitively.
I laugh softly.
I look up into the emptiness of space,
and sigh.