For Falling by Megan Windom

For Falling by Megan Windom

Yesterday I wanted to speak it,

that nagging drone in my head that directs

my form into its proper prostration.

Today the lock jaw settles in. Unease.

A flittering building bile under

the heaving in my chest. It’s in my head.

Logic whispers soothingly in my face,

the warm embrace that tries to seep into

my head,  ensuring me it’s not that hard.

But sensibility wavers. Sometimes

I wonder what it is I’ve done to you.

We talk about getting better, being

better. Saturn jingles its rings at us.

Miniature duplicates of its loop

around Sol. We wonder where it goes when

it inserts itself discretely behind

the violently burning orb that keep us,

forever falling.  Pushing and pulling.

Incapable of moving forward in

the direction we wish to escape to.

It’s good, this act of balancing power

because eventually Saturn sneaks out

from behind supposed oblivion

and it shakes its rings at us once again.

We may be falling, but it keeps us here,

not flung into the emptiness beyond.

The uncertainty and trepidation

that chase too much internal scrutiny

are flung away when our orbits re-sync

and we fall into a lovers embrace.

_______________________________________

For Love by Robert Creeley

Yesterday I wanted to

speak of it, that sense above   

the others to me

important because all

that I know derives

from what it teaches me.   

Today, what is it that   

is finally so helpless,

different, despairs of its own   

statement, wants to

turn away, endlessly

to turn away.

If the moon did not ...

no, if you did not

I wouldn’t either, but   

what would I not

do, what prevention, what   

thing so quickly stopped.   

That is love yesterday   

or tomorrow, not

now. Can I eat

what you give me. I

have not earned it. Must   

I think of everything

as earned. Now love also   

becomes a reward so

remote from me I have

only made it with my mind.

Here is tedium,

despair, a painful

sense of isolation and   

whimsical if pompous

self-regard. But that image   

is only of the mind’s

vague structure, vague to me   

because it is my own.

Love, what do I think

to say. I cannot say it.

What have you become to ask,   

what have I made you into,

companion, good company,   

crossed legs with skirt, or   

soft body under

the bones of the bed.

Nothing says anything   

but that which it wishes   

would come true, fears   

what else might happen in

some other place, some   

other time not this one.   

A voice in my place, an   

echo of that only in yours.

Let me stumble into

not the confession but   

the obsession I begin with   

now. For you

also (also)

some time beyond place, or   

place beyond time, no   

mind left to

say anything at all,

that face gone, now.

Into the company of love   

it all returns.