Gazing Up in the New Year
Image courtesy of Angela M. Brommel.
This blog post is generously provided in kind by Angela M. Brommel. The Double Down blog is also supported by Nevada Humanities’ donors.
By Angela M. Brommel
After nearly twenty-five years as a Nevada resident and poet, recently my poems moved from the landscape to the sky. My earliest poems came from first experiences hiking in the desert after moving here from the Midwest. It makes sense that for many years I was looking down at what was new, what might be dangerous if I didn’t pay attention.
Every day there are so many reasons to look down. I look down so that I don’t trip on the stairs. I look down at my phone because hardly anyone calls anymore when a text is so easy. When I walk with my dog, Emma, I look down to see the world through her eyes. One of my greatest joys is watching her happiness while she does dog things like rolling in the clover.
“Even if this story is unknown, the phrase ‘too close to the sun’ is still used to suggest that we guard ourselves against reaching for or being too much.”
Late fall I was at an outdoor event in Henderson when I heard someone mention a paraglider. Instead of looking down at my feet, down at my phone, or down at someone else’s cute dog, I looked up and caught a man crossing the sky in a powered paraglider.
In the Greek story of Icarus and Daedalus, the son and father escape being imprisoned by King Minos by creating wings from bird feathers, bits of clothing, and bees wax. I still remember how my high school Latin teacher peered over her glasses as she emphasized that Icarus fell from the sky because he didn’t listen to his father. Even if this story is unknown, the phrase “too close to the sun” is still used to suggest that we guard ourselves against reaching for or being too much.
But facing the McCullough Range at sunset, that old story quickly dissipated for me. There are times when the resistance to your desire to fly should be ignored because the unknown could lead to unimaginable beauty. If you can choose that happiness no matter the heaviness of the day, you are returning to the thing that grants you flight.
Gazing up
You see a man on a powered hang glider against the McCullough Range
as the sun sets, imagining him coming home at the end of the day
foot on pedal, impatient, wanting only to fly again.
All day long the people are people-ing so hard it feels impossible
to breathe sometimes. The only free place left is in the sky.
The man passes between two black peaks, crossing
a neon pink and azure sky. The children in their houses,
after a long ride on the school bus and another packaged snack,
hear the sound outside like a lawnmower in the clouds.
They run to the yard asking, how is this possible? Unlike the dreams
where we run as fast as we can, flap our arms or furiously part
the air with a heavy breaststroke, this man lifts into the sky with ease.
Universe, hear us down here bearing the weight of too much humanness.
Make us light like the flying descendants of dinosaurs. Make us light
like our neighbor who has found a way to leave it all behind,
albeit briefly, one bright flight at a time.
Angela M. Brommel is a Nevada writer with Iowa roots, and the recent past Clark County Poet Laureate. She is the author of Mojave in July (Tolsun Books) and Plutonium & Platinum Blond (Serving House Books). At The Citron Review, she serves as Editor-in-Chief and Poetry Editor. To learn more about Angela M. Brommel visit angelambrommel.com.