Free Fall
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 breath. 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.
Published by Poetry Porch/Sonnet Scroll, Poetry Life & Times, Artvilla, Trinacria, The Chained Muse and vzjp.cz (in a Czech translation by Václav Z J Pinkava). Keywords/Tags: free, fall, falling, night, sky, wheel, axle, orbit, gravity, sun, star, moon, planet, satellite, Lethe, air, atmosphere, tether, tethered, umbilical, floating, separate, separation, distance, closeness, nearness, togetherness, attachment
Mar 25, 2020
Mar 25, 2020 at 11:23 PM UTC
Free Fall
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 breath. 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.
Published by Poetry Porch/Sonnet Scroll, Poetry Life & Times, Artvilla, Trinacria, The Chained Muse and vzjp.cz (in a Czech translation by Václav Z J Pinkava). Keywords/Tags: free, fall, falling, night, sky, wheel, axle, orbit, gravity, sun, star, moon, planet, satellite, Lethe, air, atmosphere, tether, tethered, umbilical, floating, separate, separation, distance, closeness, nearness, togetherness, attachment