From high enough up it’s a question of scale
The mountains look like campfire skeletons,
Left over from the last earth’s burning
             And this is where you will the wind
             And this is where you will know gravity
             And this is a failure of silence
Only witness to the act in preparation
A man talked down from a bridge by police with guns drawn
            What we remember as we strap on
            These wings
How, as a child I would pop clover blossoms into my mouth from the grass
In hopes of tasting what the bees taste before the honey
            Is it smoke or rainclouds that create such a shade of Edwardian gray,
Cinders or embers? What I carry in the angry womb of my memory
A bird’s eye view, I am a dying fall, a ventriloquism act
The voices when they call me, call me into flight

Nate Maxson is a writer and performance artist. The author of several collections of poetry, he lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.