Date: May 6th, 2014

Skydiver

by Charles Ghigna

A Fury of Motion: Poems for Boys by Charles GhignaFirst step
and he swallows
the dry, delicious fear
of walking on air.

Body bent back
into a bow,
he falls into the arms
of the screaming wind,
his heart beating
taps in his ears.

Pop,
and an angel wing
pulls him from the thunder
of a hundred-
mile-an-hour dream.

He sits perched,
a runaway cloud
of contentment,
a fearless eagle feather
lost in the drift
of an early afternoon.

Knees bent, he pulls
the taut reins of reality,
ready-sets himself
for one final, little lift,
one last tiptoe of air
before his flying feet
must run their
earthbound way
back home.

Copyright © 2003 Charles GhignaFrom the book A Fury of Motion: Poems for Boys. Published by Boyds Mills Press. Reprinted by permission of the author.

About this Poem

“Skydiver” was written about my own skydiving experience.

About The Author

Charles Ghigna - Father Goose

Photo by Scott Pierce

Charles Ghigna (Father Goose) is an award-winning poet, children’s author, speaker, and nationally syndicated feature writer who helps promote the love of poetry and children’s literature throughout the world. He is the author of more than 5,000 poems and 60 books from Random House, Disney, Hyperion, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, Abrams, Boyds Mills, Charlesbridge, Capstone and other publishers. His books have been featured on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America,” PBS and NPR. His poems appear in hundreds of textbooks and anthologies, and in magazines for adults and children from The New Yorker and Harper’s to Highlights and Cricket. His poems also appear in the national SAT and ACT tests.

Ghigna served as poetry editor of The English Journal for the National Council of Teachers of English, editorial advisor for the U.S. Kids magazines, and nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. He is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Mary Roberts Rinehart Foundation. He has presented poetry readings at the Library of Congress, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the American Library in Paris, the International Schools of South America, and at hundreds of schools, colleges, conferences, libraries, book fairs, and literary events throughout the U.S. and overseas.

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