High Wire Man

He starts at dawn.
From a hill above a tiny
French village a wire stretches up
over cottages parti-colored, harlequinesque
a single steeple, tall beeches swaying.
He walks at first like a tumbler, leaping
and changing his feet, turning cartwheels
about the pole that balances—one false turn
but he catches himself last instant before
dead weight—and then the long stride
over the housetops, each step centered
afresh.

Do we really hope he falls—
Isn’t it the overcoming that thrills
each step an overcoming not of death
but of something like slavery, on the wire
to fail beyond shame? We imagine fear of
broken bones and agony, death of deaths
by violence, but ask him and he’ll tell you
he is at home on the wire. Think of the pole
the balancing, the purity of it. Any life
he loses isn’t his own.

From his heart stretches another wire
tugging towards the hard planet—
what he risks is loss of height, but in
the end the heart implodes, wires run to ground
over a little stile, step foot in a field of folk.
We cheer and weep—ask and he’ll tell you
he was at home on the wire.