Sun Wing

The psychiatrist hypnotist aviator
Has a plan to fly around the world on one wing,

A feathery thing, wide as a warehouse but frail
As a taut sheet of rice paper, a sort of kite

That catches the sun as well as the wind and serves,
At least for him, third-generation explorer

Of inhospitable realms in extravagant
Devices, as a metaphysical conceit:

Life is a kind of flying in a delicate
Creation requiring constant readjustment,

Patience, exhaustion, daring, the ability
"To drop your certitudes, your common assumptions,

Your convictions sometimes, to be more flexible

To adapt to the unknown." Fair enough, although,

However exquisitely beautiful the plane,
However unprecedented the flight it makes,

However intrigued and even in awe we are

Of the realization of such a strange dream,

Do we really need fine wings to be hypnotized

By pieties of survival under this sun?