
I take flight and I am free. To move to power and propel and be. To travel through and with the spaces, weightless.
I am weightless. The cold is gone; the dam is gone. My skies are warm air and opportunity. I fly above it all, above the doubtful dams, above cracked ice and dents. I fly higher and higher to explore and renew. Begin. Yes, begin. The steam powers the piston and I propel forward. To begin.
I fly high, seeing nothing but clouds and sky. I’m weightless, weightless, weightless…
(But still the weight—I forget the states I leave behind. Like water that flows, reflects; like ice that cracks, crumbles, cries.)
I am what I was; I was what I am. I pause, glide through the air, and encounter another dam.
A cloud of realization that knows and haunts. It collects me, suffocates and taunts.
I can’t feel the heat of newness or the warmth of water; I can’t feel the cool touch of ice or freeze. I collect here, feel restricted in unease.
I’m stagnant, a trapped transformation.
I rain down to the surface as water, feel wind, and return, back to the stagnance, back to the cold.
But as ice, I don’t crack; I take shape, I sculpt.
” I am what I was; I was what”What dos you mean by this?
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Thanks for asking, Ivan!
This line comes from reflection. When thinking about life, we often forget the “past” parts of ourselves, the days that came prior to today. Oftentimes, we get so into our daily routines and tasks that we don’t reflect on the past. We don’t realize that who we are now is an extension of our part selves.
At this point in the poem— and in my life— I start to realize that me (who I am now, and who I was then) is a conglomeration of experience, both past and present. So in other words, it’s about tying our two selves together, our past selves with our current selves, to live the current moment.
Excellent question!
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