Podkletnov’s Task

At his potter’s wheel/Fancying himself a mythic hero/He throws a clay shield, palms smoothing damp, flattening the dull curve/Spinning a disc/Behind which he will try to hide/From the blind hold of a distant god/like hapless Jonah bellied in a whale

Possessive, infallible
Like the devil, like death
Impossible to evade forever
Dogged like all gods must

And like him most of us will try and try
For the wild joy
That reckless fling, lift and fancy
Splayed limbs, rushing
Flapping
Muscles coiled massed propelling
Bunched squirming against the
Eternal vigilance of force
Like a toddler repulsed by the milky coddle of their mother’s clutch

And the attempt to navigate the bind together
In messy flocks
Forgetting the private relation between the body and the half drag, half embrace that will favour and quicken one over another and yet treat both the same in the end

Will fall anyway,
Will always fall

Podkletnov’s Task

Composed of matter, mineral, dense

Only the passivity of trees, the grass, the plants
Paying rooted homage, an offering
But turning anyway, drifting towards the light, touching still placating
Denying feathered hubris
Only the passivity of trees
Makes sense of celestial law