At some moment in everyone’s life
There comes the desire to extend one’s arms,
To rotate slowly on your tiptoes in a circle
And flap those arms up and down, up and down,
As if they were thick wings.
Why shouldn’t this be your moment to fly?

And why shouldn’t you beam north
To get an aerial view of Yellowknife white
In winter, and then keep playing migration-
In-reverse and shoot yourself all the way up
To the center of the Arctic Circle.

Or why shouldn’t you beam south
And head for Santiago,
Find Chilean scalps to drop a load upon
Before diving down to bob for anchovies
At home in the Southern Hemisphere.

Or why shouldn’t you beam east
And try to cross the roiling Atlantic,
Maybe get as far as Tenerife
Before packing it in and floating free
On hills of chartreuse seawater.

And why shouldn’t you beam west
To Asia and imitate the China Clipper, be
A floating dock in Hong Kong or old Nanking,
Cargoed with opiates, armed with brushes,
And primed to paint my every sunset
From now till kingdom come.

# # #

William C. Blome writes poetry and short fiction. He lives wedged between Baltimore and Washington, DC, and he is a master’s degree graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. His work has previously seen the light of day in such fine little mags as Poetry London, PRISM International, Fiction Southeast, Roanoke Review, and The California Quarterly.

Photo: Joshua Earle