POVERTY AND GLORY

ENTRY: We could feel it before it reached us.  We could smell it before it breathed life into our canvas and whistled in our ears.  It had to be a North Wind...and it had to be just right...and it was.  Only a handful of times before had we ever heard of it happening, you know.  Many of us, the saltiest of the crew, had heard the myth, had, from time to time, uttered those stories to one another up on deck, when we needed a thrill.  The younger lot wouldn't listen to us; they would not hear of legend.  For them, our aged and weathered faces, like our tired and battered ship, somehow discredited our integrity and worth.  We may have believed, but never had we EXPECTED it to come true- being able to fly...to sail among the clouds...to reach above the sun-baked rooftops of our village...to navigate the skies and not the sea...an adventure unknown.  

Now, it is that very moment that has arrived, a final journey for a handful of honest men at the end.  The heavens beckon, and we now shall sail to meet them; not a penny in our pockets nor a dime to our names.  With a hole in her stern and moth-eaten sails at her mast, the old girl surely on a last voyage with her brothers-in-arms aboard.  The aviary vessel...the cloud ship...we are poverty and glory.

SIZE 17 3/4" x 17 1/2" 

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