Free Fall
Snap!
He looked up.
"Oh, snap."
From flight
to grind
High joy
to base fear
So fast
So strange
the way
the best and worst of
things can be
so close
like that.
Just one snap
or step
or sneeze
or breeze
is all it takes
to take you
from the midst
of one,
smack
to the next--
Or did you do that?
Now the Earth, She knows
the highs and lows;
they’re meant to be linked by much.
The mountain peak
knows lots of weeds
and rocks
and sand
and such
The mount
she has no sense of sea--
Not the one
she came from
nor the one
she’ll be-come
Bit by
bit by
Bit
But
Men
who so fight
to be free
Snub their place
as one
of this
space and time;
Of its pace
men whine
“It binds!”
and so
Men fight
the slow.
Men like
to know
that they can make.
Men take
to tools
twist up loop holes
and jump on through.
Whee!
Men need
to leap
to feel
what they call
Free.
And that is why he jumped
this man
To leave his ground bound form
with it
To feel the sky--
not just the air and wind of it--
He jumped to feel
Free
Space:
God’s place;
To leave the Earth,
on Earth,
The one Earth to which
he now fell
Fast.
The clouds grew more
and more
thick
Up there
the plane could not be seen
(Was that up?)
nor one thing ‘round
(What's down?)
No more sense now
of self, or...
Any-how...
He screamed.
And the sky screamed too.
Not just the air and wind of it--
It was the sound of Space
on Earth.
A scream that laughs at men
and asks
Was this not your wish?
This fright of sound is heard
in just one place
on Earth--
that’s it!
In the ears of men who leap
and fall
and
fall
and
fall
through it.
To drown in clouds--
the fire of fear:
to turn back
to ash, back to dust,
Back to rocks
and sand
and such--
Who knows what's what?
Mad rush
of blood
just one sound
now left
at long last
Splat?
No.
Splash!