Philippe Walks Between the Towers

"It's very easy to walk on a wire if you spend a whole lifetime practicing for it. So I was actually enjoying myself tremendously, and I was feeling the bird in me, the feathers in my arm grow."--Philippe Petit

A man in black, his mouth
shaping a catenary smile,
runs lightly between two hands
that grasp the air above New York.

Today he would be jailed,
charged with reckless endangerment
or remanded to psychiatric observation.
At best delusional,
at worst subversive. Who would see
the joy in a dance across the sky?

I look down from this height
and see only myself
broken on the ground.
My stomach recoils from the edge
but my feet twitch and my arms
long to unfurl. The rush
of wind drowns out the traffic noise.

I am no aerialist
and my dreams are not full
of wings. I will watch you sway,
Philippe, suspended over
a different future, whole
and unafraid.