Like Icarus I soared and lost my wings,
Like Sisyphus I rolled my daily round
Prometheus, I faltered, and was bound,
Like Tantalus I longed for unreached things.
For sixteen months I crawled along a line
Dimensionless and static, ate and crapped,
Drained my devices, charged them, always trapped
And could not touch the life that I called mine.
Until, with silver needles in my arm,
With great excitement buried under calm,
By science’s numbered promises of risk
I rose up, dared to move, began to fly
Towards you, through the newly open sky,
And saw the Earth below me as a disc.
30th August 2021
