Far From Kitty Hawk

Two brothers from Dayton, Ohio, in their quest for flight,
took to the sands of Kitty Hawk and showed that humans
could fly. Their steps were small, yet those steps were the
the beginning of flight that now carries man above this planet,
that now lifts us to heights only imagined and sought by those
who dared to dream or try. Orville and Wilbur Wright envisioned,
all right--and from the wind-swept, sand-strewn hills of Kitty Hawk,
North Carolina, they enabled humanity’s initiation into that wild blue.
Theirs was, at first, a modest flight measured in mere feet. Yet their
legacy is the vastness of open sky and orbits now taken for granted,
that reach far into the wonder and intrigue spanning far as humanity
can see, far as our spirits can imagine, far as the human mind can
soar. We jet from continent to continent, and we circle this globe
with technical assurance. And we have snapped gravity’s tether
with spacecraft on their bold voyages to other worlds and, just
perhaps, to distinct intelligences inhabiting this cosmic fugue.
They accepted the challenge and they succeeded. Mankind
stands tall upon the shoulders of the brothers from Dayton.


Free Verse Poem
18 Lines