Falling
Something about the way black pours
like night over your shoulders—
it makes me wish, on nights like this,
that I could beg so much of ink,
could ask such ease of words
to let them wander the page in waves.
But ink can never mimic the migrant fall
of blackbirds trailing tresses through clouds,
or climbing wisps of wind with something
so like persistence, we cannot help
but think it metaphor. Their dance
reminds me, sometimes, of the way
two people can slip casually,
entirely into each other, then continue
down as one—tentative at first, eager—
but soon, grasping calmly for nothing
but each other and the whispered
promise of wind to hold them,
they begin to carry each other
as blackbirds do, knowing the difference
between falling and rising
depends on something so simple.