Classic Poem

The first thing I felt
when I began to toddle
was that arms and legs
would not move as I wished.

Now on the threshold of seventy
once again I feel
that arms and legs
will not move as I wish.

Tottering toward
mother's arms,
or clinging tenuously to life
propped by invisible arms,

I'm not after
jet planes
or spaceships:

I want the ecstasy of flight.
I want to don wings in the company of the angels,
to be a caterpillar become a butterfly,
to have the whole planetary system as my garden.