(for Gretchen)
The thing about knowing about gravity,
(this is a hard thing not to know),
about skinned knees and errant ground balls and
legs broken after launching from stairs –
is that sometimes when you see the body
suspended, mid-air,
(the cliff or the dock or the rooftop behind),
all you can think of is the heaviness
of our bodies, all that water and blood and bone,
and the inevitable cruel meeting
of the hard ground, or the cold lake, or the roiling volcano –
(all the endings you think you know
terrify.)
But when you don’t know
about the inevitability of gravity,
the willful, insistent, the insatiable earth,
then
you can see the body,
limbs out like a baby’s in startled surprise
at the beaten path she’s left behind,
arms stretched wide
and open
to the rest of the world,
to the untrammeled sky.
Halfway North 