Freedom Isn't Free (05)

There the matter ends: a foot forward
pivots you, or you’re up against a wall,
the plywood barrier your sole support.
The riskiest among them graze the novice:
good skaters never crash into another.

If science is embedded in the bones,
freedom is a knowledge of the law,
and laws are circular. Without law,
how things fly, novice families or couples
crashing in the barrier supporting them.

Faster, they fall apart, as marble limbs
shatter from Adonis, or bones rattle,
bones a statue never even knew it had.
Without a law, even ribbons on the cars
can mean nothing. Freedom isn’t free

says science rules. Then the text fades,
then colors, and the stickers fall away.
But the message only means one thing:
even speed and abandon have barriers,
or perhaps there is a price to be paid.

Skaters leaning toward an empty center
cannot stay there. Even the novice knows
enough to stay aside. The expert spins
as close as anyone, yet never hits a center
X marks, marks daubed blindly aqua-blue.

No laws, no freedom, momentum only,
only bodies flung from the systems
to which they consent, sun and sun-king
and groundling leaning from the center,
referees policing the speed-skaters,

retired men as likely as younger ones
with gold chains or celebrity player shirts,
driving cars with ribbons on the trunks.
Some exhort, say freedom isn’t free.

Law twists bows, demands tricolors,
stamps these ribbons saying freedom,
repeating that even freedom isn’t free--
why skaters never bump into another:
science has been buried in their bones.

A body that cannot lean to the center
flies away, outcast from the roller rink.
But neither can you pirouette in place
because true centers lack expanse,
in your dreams a point, unlike land,

which sprawls on every side half-filled
with fender-bent cars with ribbons
reminding readers what they knew,
how good to be shaken by the speed
before you collide and meet your limits,

when you neglected to lean to the center
you could neither reach nor stand upon,
not reach exactly, but neither could ignore,
nor tag, nor pin a flag upon to certify.