It felt like I could see for miles,
Like the earth had grown her own tower to God.
From this palace of pine
I surveyed her kingdom,
Wondered who could punish her
For the pride that drove men
To build upward.
I saw no one for hours.
Heard nothing but my own sighs
Mixing with the wind.
It could have been a song,
Long before I was a thought or a stain,
But in the cooling night my lungs speak
With nothing but a cleaving mist.
My breath is a different language.
Something harder, sharper. Separate.
The last gasps of daylight,
The last clawing, straining efforts
Of the ever slipping sun
Are riches, becoming more like heaven
The nearer they are to earth.
Warmth. Color.
This currency I gather far from home,
This currency of light hearts and not heavy pockets
Will pay my fare for the coming journey.
I descend,
Careful of the mother I passed
On the way up.
I cannot tell her that her children,
With their wings still splinters
And their desperate mouths,
Have nothing to fear from me.
I should be branded by the impotence of my own mouth
But am not.
am welcomed back time and again
to the palace
to the wind.