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Lesley Saunders

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The Experiment

Of the boy or boys who took part nearly everything must be invented:
whether their parents had given consent, whether friends were envious
or scared, how unexpectedly their dreams of flying would end - though

you’d know the moment you’d met one by the excitable wings of his collar,
by the folded ailerons of the shoulder-blades, the way his uncertain hair
has coiled itself into wires, and the eyes like skies after lightning; even so,

hearing a series of small storms in a room upstairs, you’d hardly infer
what was there: something suspended, clairvoyant, a body of evidence
plying between laws of desire and repulsion, results and their cause,

the child all the while sparkling, a lark-mirror, a dark chandelier, levitating
feathers, confetti, little leaves of gold that fill his nose and mouth like a shout,
till he’s an ariel in the bird-catcher’s hand, thrilled almost to bits.

What makes it work is the silk, and the virtue repeatedly applied to his heels:
hinting, if only the rain holds off, at brave new systems for travelling through time
over wild-eyed distances, high wire acts over oceans and prairies, a rodeo of lights.

For some looking back it must have seemed just a dream, a phrase they’d been
going through, unconditional, perfect; for others, a warning of danger to come,
charged, resistant, different, a world hung by a thread; the future before it’s begun.

 

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