[RCL]

Here's one on a sport I haven't tried but observe on most clear days near my home:

We hug the earth,--how rarely we mount!
Methinks we might elevate ourselves a little more.
Thoreau, “Walking”

The Hang Glider

It is said transcendent souls inform us:
I sometimes think
Mine is like a soaring hang glider’s

Shadow, sauntering across mountains
On sunny days,
Skipping over tree tops, disappearing

Behind a grove or into a deep crevice
And popping up
On a clean-swept shale slope,

Huge, much larger than the glider,
Far less defined,
Almost amoebic as it slinks its way

Across unleveled earth—but then contracts
As the glider
Swiftly sinks toward its safe ground,

The shadow moving ever more slowly,
As if waiting
For its substance to catch up with it.

If that shadow’s anything like a soul,
It’s most active
When a body willfully transcends it,

Most indolent when the body hugs it
Too tight to earth.