the skysprinters

I was just going to say,
before you went,
before you went away,
I was just going to say that I think
it was the war that brought it on
in some way, or
it started in that time

Yes, when one person or another,
even in mid-sentence or mid-thought, would slowly
rise
and hover just an inch above the ground and
squeak, squeal, and reach down with their toes,
and then might angle down their head and shoulders
and swim like …
like underwater birds

With a grunt or a hugging-in,
making embarrased,
they would assent to their rising
till they might - carried by the wind -
embrace the limbs of trees and
finger-hold on building ledges

Then it started in the battle zone,
and those crouching in their dug-out,
or squat behind a pock-marked wall,
would lift past rain-silvered rooves
past gold-edged trees
into the yellow sky. And,
if they should recognise as enemy
those also rising
and should aim and shoot,
it was found
that they would drop like stone
and shatter on the rock below

Meanwhile the shot-at could only smile
and go rising, rising
far into the azure belt,
the cloud-pillared sky