"Wreck" and "rise above"

Because of the first, the fear of wreck,

which they taught us to fear (though we learned

at once, and easily),

because of the wreck

that was expected (and metal given velocity

and heft to assure it)—

we became adepts in

rise above: how many versions: the church

steeple that took the eye straight up to

heaven (though it seemed snagged on

the cross-beam of that cross, torn blue

at the top, where sense leaked out). And

rise above, transcendence, on that higher

plane, the vertical direction of virtue (a bony

finger pointing up to where matter dissolves

into distaste for it);

the space program, expensive

tons of rocket (soon to be debris) fired off

the planet's crust at anything out there, pocked

moon, red rocky Mars, ever the upward

urge, carved in the marble arch of the old library

door under which generations passed,

hoping to rise above it all—

like the woman the magician levitates

over the table, her body floating an unlikely

inch or two above the velvet-draped plateau...

watch her hovering, weightless,

the crowd staring

in wonder, the trick of the thing still hidden,

and the magician doing something now

with his hands, a flurry of brilliant

silk in the air, as she floats

in the endlessness of art,

the magician

still waving his scarves, the air a bright

shatter of wings, doves from a hat,

our disbelief suspended,

while below, the wrecks accumulate:

scrap yard, broken concrete slabs, and

all those bodies not exempt from gravity,

beneath our notice as we ride

above it all, like froth on a wave

that will be water falling by the ton,

soon, when the tide turns.