My father first threw me across water,

an infant, pinned to a javelin.  In the warrior

dream of the risen body, heaven is a precinct

of sweetmeats and dancing girls.  My heaven

was constant flight.  He threw me skyward,

so that I would never doubt the will’s fierce transit.

Fate was another kind of fate.  What I took to be

divine momentum—flung from his hand and sped

onward with the hawk’s guidance, turns out to be

merely a weapon’s trajectory.  Pity the weapon,

the missle locked unconsciously on doom—

launched and accelerating to its own destruction

in the name of the cruel illusions:

perfect human aim, god-given prophecy.