Sky Diving (For Mary Santulli)

The eagle hangs on air.
Its ride depends on hollow bones and feathers.
Swallows glide the surface of the sky
as if on skates.
The falcon is efficient,
tucks its wings and plummets like a stone.
All trust the air
and spread wings wide
to catch the ride that’s there.

The thought makes me uneasy.

What I lack is faith that lets me jump,
the trust of air
that birds, it seems, are born with.
I can’t see
that space itself is solid,
is a track, in fact,
where things like planets hold in place.

But, then, I’m not an Einstein.

When I jump, my eyes are closed,
or if I see,
then all I see are hands.
My gloves are gold. I know I wear a helmet.
I was told to look around, enjoy,
but wind is cold and rushes like a train.
Its iron wheels roar.

Then harness grabs and holds me, jerks me up.
I swing relieved, embarrassed,
something plucked… a dandelion or rose bud.
Empty air is now my closest friend.
I suck air in and push the old air out.
Air is pure love.
Space is an arm that holds me.
What’s up, what’s down
now, once more, greatly matters.

Time becomes like something in a dream.

I learn that grace is not a thing I earn,
but is a place that birds on wing inhabit,
birds explore
here high among the clouds
and what is more,
is not to be accepted, but assumed;

a credit that exists, a country store
that you need only enter
to be fed
because you say you hunger.

I am glad the earth is there and is the place I’ll stand,
plant feet again and run.
I’ll not do twice what I have done today.
My love of life, if anything, is stronger,
but my fear and need to have control
are close to hand.

I see what green earth paints, what blue lakes hold,
how flowers make a difference.
Clouds enfold
some spots of earth in shadow.
Like a cloud, I, too, must cast a shadow,
but am too small
and light to really matter.

Then all at once the earth increases speed
to meet me and embrace;
then I am down and flat upon my ass,
the kind of clown
that makes the children laugh,
and laugh too.
I’m glad to be alive, relieved, it’s true,
to wallow in the grass
and find the blue sky empty overhead.

It is my dream
to not again forget where I have been
and seen what I have seen,
but take my place
among the wingless creatures that have been
and are a part of earth,
but watch the birds,
those acrobats of trust that grace the air,
that daily cast their lives upon the stairs
of nothing they can see
and make it theirs.