Friday, March 21, 2014

Jumpers
Jumpers
The act of falling
Leaping haplessly off a cliff
Peering at the bottom with the hopeless apprehension
Of the worm that struggles to escape the bird
Some go with a lifeline
Tugging them back to safety
Just before they smash into the bottom
Friends and family hoist them back up
So they live to leap another day
Others trust themselves
Leaping with parachutes
Made from paper hearts and cheap dragon scales
Bought from the supermarket
Funded by their mother’s love
They touchdown
Grace like a lavender crane
Walking through the valley below
Cheshire cat grins wide
Willing the others to follow
Others glide
A stable place to hang from
Gliders slicing past parachutes
Their love of the descent
Only rivaled
By their love of the flight itself
Such scholars
Whose knowledge of wind and heat
Carry them far from the base of the valley
Into a life few of us can see
Much less imagine
Then there are those
Forced to the edge by the events
Of a bad movie life
Fire around them
Darkness below
Jumping
Praying
That the bottom of the cliff
Is merciful
Compared to the top of the mountain
They fall praying
Clinging to silver threads of hope
That the life they’ve lost in the fall
Will be mirrored in the waterfall
That forms beneath their feet
We all jump
Praying that when we reach the bottom
We were all along rising on the backs of gliders
Instead of the blood and bones
Of the valley below

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