On High Trilogy

Afternoon Flight

I’m sorry I’ll miss the meeting.
But I’ve heard the wind,
I’ve seen the clouds
And I’m going to the sky.
I’m trading in drudgery’s demands
For a sleek plane that heeds my commands.
Where cumulus boil and cirrus flee.
Where sun turns rain into diamonds across my canopy.
In the infinite expanse of cerulean blue,
Move over, god, I’ve serious work to do.
Pitching and rolling and dancing the afternoon away.

One Sky

Landmasses across oceans.

Barriers of water and mountains, barriers of walls.

Borders isolating minds.

We are sectioned off from one another.

Separated into camps.

Until we take to the sky.

The one sky.

With its streaming tendrils of cirrus

Connecting and embracing the globe.

Sweeping away boundaries.

Spanning the oceans.

There is but one sky.

On High

The wind, reaching down to beckon,

Whispered: “The earth is just the bottom of the Universe,

Something to push against to help you soar.”

So up I rise through cool air until a cumulonimbus delirium

Flings me into a buoyant frenzy of white shards,

And we fly away to dance along joyous streams of sky.

Oceans and continents glisten in the sunlight and pass below.

I dive through the billowing halls and vast

Cloud galleries that march

Across the arc of the sunlit sphere.

Turning, tumbling, clouds shear and fly in choruses of ecstasy,

As my mind seizes the freedom it has said yes to.

Accelerating, I shoot out the top, into the deepening blue above

Through the pristine cirrus wisps.

Now even faster, even higher.

Rising to the edge of the silent sanctuary of space, I pause.

In awe, I look back across the brilliant blue-white planet,

Then up, to embrace the cosmic symphony above.

Arms stretched out among the stars, I brush against galactic shores.

Transcendence, so feebly sought before, I have you.

How dare we ask for more than this.

How dare we ask for more than this.

About Harvey H. Madison

Harvey Madison is a lifetime resident of West Texas, and was raised in the Southern Baptist Church. He has a B.A. in Psychology, and a Master of education. While earning his living as a photographer and photography educator, Madison is an activist in the areas of civil liberties and education. In 1989 he started the Center for Critical Thinking. He has served on the Texas state board of Common Cause, and has been on the chapter board of the American Civil Liberties Union, serving as its president for fourteen years. He attends and is past president of the Lubbock Unitarian Church. He loves everything about the sky, and flies his own plane, chases storms, uses an astronomical telescope, and has skydived.

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