Indian Summer Layover in Grandview Heights

Birds by the thousands,
their cries arguing with the air
like a storm
Where do they come off
being so confrontational?
the great trees lift them
into their sky
which only knows it could easily tumble them,
unfamiliar with their ally, the ground

The Woodhill swings down
Mulford, a road you climbed
all your childhood
to school, to friend's houses,
it's slope feels to have slumped,
it's grade lessened, though
the trees you now are awed by how tall they've grown,
they've always been mostly that tall
Your hometown becomes a demonstration
of the pliability of how things are seen
You've begun to experience the difficulty
of any thing's survival
into all that air pressing down,
the miracle of a thing learning
to turn the violence of a storm
into drinking water

The birds that you remember never hearing,
you now glory in their storm,
and the branches too,
stretched into the gray
over the houses and sidewalks
you know by heart

A blonder man sees the sky
and his ambition says
it belongs to him
If he gets there
he is a hero
if he falls
he is a tragedy
if he remains still
he is sodden and trampled
like a piece of grass
stuck to the mud

You are not an ambitious man