The Winged Bicycle Poem by Paul Hartal

The Winged Bicycle



An iron-winged metaphor
soars through the clouds:
A concrete poem,
an airplane flies high
in the dome of sky.

Ikarus did not fall in vain.
Imagination has triumphed
and, no doubt, it is superior
to knowledge.

But did the legend of Ikarus
inspire the American Wright brothers?
Together with Wilbur,
Orville Wright worked
in the bicycle repair business.
They combined dreams
with courage, instinct with intelligence,
intuition with mechanical aptitude
and kite gliding experience.

On December 17,1903,
Orville Wright, a bicycle champion,
piloting a motorized glider kite,
managed to take off the ground
20 feet above a wind-swept beach
at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina.
It was the first powered flight
in history. It lasted 12 seconds
and covered a distance of 120 feet.

The Wright brothers did not care
much about scientific theory.
Scientists did not take them seriously
either. An article published in 1905
In the “Scientific American” suggested
that the flight was a hoax.

The “experts” explained
that the airplane was an impossible
thing because, as everyone knows,
a machine heavier than air could not fly.

Tuesday, June 9, 2015
Topic(s) of this poem: imagination,technology
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