Alphabet City

The arc of my float,
over the village,
a shallow parabola,
steady, deliberate
Pan on a taut guide,
level with those in the loge.

No one flies like this these days,
not like this anymore;
jump, trust, merge into updraft,
simple flip-gravity, easier to float
if you close your eyes.

How I love ascension,
my body carved, massages the flight:
Victory winged at Samothrace.

I’m young and crazed,
a romantic in the gondola, a pied balloon,
throwing out ballast to rise!

At night, low altitude,
I cherish the sight, your fires,
you hovered in the round,
my vantage point just above
tops of pines that surround.

Your laughter draws me,
I lower the flame,
I settle down,
pilot to a spot
right about where you sit.

© Carlos Chagall, 2013

While it’s just an Autumn Friday,
it somehow seems more than that,
preordained a holy day
but by whom, I couldn’t know.

It does feel special –
a canoe carved in time
that I feel I’m obliged,
even intended to lie in,

lay low
to shoot the rapids,
braced in a four-point stance.

I look up, see nothing
but sky in constellation,
water founts arc the lip,
refresh but nearly drown me.

On this day of reclamation,
nocturnes for atonement
pipe through vents
that rim the sky (good bass
– it sounds like vinyl)
push cold air.

And I sense there’s someone out there,
maybe a Being or two,
masterminds, big kahuna,
a capo, a boss,
a God.

Murmuring I can’t distinguish
clearly, the words incanted,
more than prayers, I think
perhaps formulae.

Or maybe it’s just two Angels
out for kicks on a Friday night,
the weekend’s tip
with…

I am a witness to that late morning,
you on the other side of the creek bank,
in black and white.

How old are you there, maybe 10?
What a perfect age to be,
the first of double-digit
years.

Rough gabardine trousers
and cable-knit cardigan,
so dapper really,
atop the crushed rock,
that the old man bagged
for a penny a load.

I prop the photo
up in front
a bare bulb
and cup my hands
to the sides of my eyes,
to blinder my view
from ambient distraction.

The sun-hot white
light, 200 watts,
excites the photons
captured there
from that day
on the silver of the film,
swells the sounds and smells,
squeezes barge horns,
hair tonic, damp wool,
chalk and limestone,
heavy leather shoes slipping on rock,
children yelling in play,
in quick scurry over quarry,
racing to be king at the top.

You turn to me