Looking Back

Being bold with the free jazz of thought,
he launched himself like the loveliest
and most unhindered of all high-flying notes,
clear and above the crowd,
into the clean space and air
of the vaulted auditorium -

And settled, momentarily unruffled,
in time to look back
and see, perhaps for the briefest and only moment,
how pleased and beautiful his diminishing
stance had become, transfigured, as it were,
by this welcome yet unexpected adulation,
into the most total and perfect image
of the creature that he had always imagined
           himself
most deliciously to be.