Shaping the Invisible

Listen! Bats on the evening air

sounding the dusk with cries too high to hear,

invisible scribbles on the sky. One fell,

broken, a heartbeat in the palm of your hand.

 

You probed its bones for the mystery of flight.

In your theorems' thrumming drum of certainty,

before physics, before the miracle had a name,

you knew we'd free ourselves from gravity's shackles,

 

break the chains that hold us to the ground,

loose the weight of footfall, foothold

for the hush and lift of air beneath our wings,

to lift and fly as arrows, as shooting stars.

 

And before we knew long-wave, how sound can ride

up, up to touch the ionosphere and return,

you predicted men would speak across oceans,

as bats in the evening sky, and you knew,

 

seeking the secret of flight in its engineered bones,

how we would lift ourselves on the same air.