Monday Poem: Flying

[Every Monday (until I run out of them), I’m posting a poem of mine that has fallen out from the submission process for some reason. In most cases, it will be one where I’ve received no response to my submission for at well over a year or more. Maybe the magazine I submitted them to has folded, the submission was lost in the post, or whatever. So, these poems can be seen as lost, orphans, of uncertain status, or something like that.]

Flying

I hoped to break free soon, and learn then how to soar
on up toward the bluest skies and, reaching out,
forever taking handfuls from the empty air.

I searched for that one place I could see all the sky
forever arcing overhead, and catch a glimpse
of those who learnt the perfect art of flying free.

But all our greying skies are empty dreams these days.

I want to step beyond the edge, where pleading eyes
cannot attempt to drag me back to fall on down,
as we always do end up, falling slowly down.

I feel desire to fly, but don't know how to dare.
Instead, I wander deserts, past skeletal frames
of those who fell down from the unforgiving sky.

I see the empty hands that once almost took hold,
that grasped, imploring, reaching for the distant skies,
now only bony brittle sticks just thrusting up
from underneath these piles of heaping dusty sand.

So now, I only watch the dust, and how it falls,
and settles slowly down again, after each step
I take towards my home. And how, in time, the sands
will shift and bury all these dreams that used to soar.