Once, swimming,
I had the sensation
I was as long
as the pool.
Stretched out,
glinting with light.
Maybe that is how it feels
to be water.
Maybe that is how a cicada feels,
flying.
Weightless, thinned to a crisp,
completely transparent.
A small, cicada-sized gust.
No matter, the clumsy
incongruous body.
It has wings.
Oh, wings.
Maybe if I can recognize
the ponderousness of body
I can see also
in myself
something like wings,
shimmering and delicate,
with the power to lift
into the air all that
earthbound-ness.
Maybe once in a while
it is possible
to leave a husk of yourself behind.
Brittle and empty,
a clean slit in the back
where you crawled out
fresh and new
to limn the humid days
with silver.
Karen Bjork Kubin is a writer and musician who loves music for the way it bypasses words and words for the way they bypass performance, waiting patiently once committed to paper or screen. She teaches violin and writes in Kirksville, Missouri, where she lives with her husband and three children.