Harnessed and zipped on a bright <br />October day, having lied to his wife, <br />Hazard jumps, and the silk spanks <br />open, and he is falling safely. <br /> <br />This is what for two years now <br />he has been painting, in a child's palette <br />-not the plotted landscape that holds dim <br />below him, but the human figure dangling safe, <br />guyed to something silky, hanging here, <br />full of half-remembered instruction <br />but falling, and safe. <br /> <br />They must have caught and spanked him <br />like this when he first fell. <br />He passes it along now, Hazard's vision. <br />He is in charge of morale in a morbid time. <br />He calls out to the sky, his voice <br />the voice of an animal that makes not words <br />but a happy incorrigible noise, not <br />of this time. The colors of autumn <br />are becoming audible through the haze. <br /> <br />It does not matter that the great masters <br />could see this without flight, while <br />dull Hazard must be taken up again and dropped. <br />He sees it. Then he sees himself <br />as he would look from the canopy above him, <br />closing safely (if he can remember <br />what to do) on the Bruegel landscape. <br />Inside the bug-like goggles, his eyes water.<br /><br />William Morris Meredith Jr.<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/hazard-s-optimism/
