Free Fall to Liftoff
by Michael R. Burch

for my father, Paul Ray Burch, Jr.

I see the longing for departure gleam
in his still-keen eye,
                                   and I understand his desire
to test this last wind, like late November leaves
with nothing left to cling to ...



The following poems about free-falling were written with Tom Petty's song "Free-Fallin'" in mind...



Free Fall (I)
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

These cloudless nights, the sky becomes a wheel
where suns revolve around an axle star ...
Look there, and choose. Decide which moon is yours.
Sink Lethe-ward, held only by a heel.

Advantage. Disadvantage. Who can tell?
To see is not to know, but you can feel
the tug sometimes—the gravity, the shell
as lustrous as damp pearl. You sink, you reel

toward some draining revelation. Air—
too thin to grasp, to breathe. Such pressure. Gasp.
The stars invert, electric, everywhere.
And so we fall in spirals through night’s fissure—

two beings—pale, intent to fall forever
around each other—fumbling at love’s tether ...
now separate, now distant, now together.



Free Fall (II)
by Michael R. Burch

after Tom Petty

I have no earthly remembrance of you, as if
we were never of earth, but merely white clouds adrift,
swirling together through Himalayan altitudes—
no more man and woman than exhaled breath—unable to fall
back to solid existence, despite the air’s sparseness: all
our being borne up, because of our lightness,
toward the sun’s unendurable brightness . . .

But since I touched you, fire consumes each wing!

We who are unable to fly, stall
contemplating disaster. Despair like an anchor, like an iron ball,
heavier than ballast, sinks on its thick-looped chain
toward the earth, and soon thereafter will be sufficient pain
to recall existence, to make the coming darkness everlasting.

Keywords/Tags: autumn, leaves, cling, clinging, wind, death, flight, fly, flying, transport, free fall, liftoff, departure, bare, barren, leafless, skeletal