It probably never registered, even
after the advent of balloons

that vertical velocity increases
when you drop weight. The focus

no doubt remained on keeping
the slave trade aloft after 1783

when slave ships experienced a curious
legal falling from grace, negative upright

thrust, because the Zong tossed slaves
overboard in a quest for profits.

Faced with ruin for fraud, I wonder
if the ship’s Liverpool owners looked

to the sky and contemplated
the possibilities of balloon transport;

how men offloaded from high
enough just might attain the right

speed to make the transition
from nuisance to pure light

having outstripped their screams
history and whatever units Einstein

might have been able to measure;
how the energy that built the West

might have transformed from darkness
into random shafts of lightening.