Falling
A Poem
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedShe touched me the first time warm and urgent.
And it was like falling that time in the mountains.
A stumble and then the fall---the relaxed inevitability of gravity
No panic, just waiting… for the ground.
The scrape of skin on stones, the soft yield of the grass and loam
Bone and muscle colliding, pulling, compressing, stretching.
And somehow when it was all over…
The tensions are gone.
The tension of remaining upright all day
The tension of life and pretence
Feeling at peace, held by the earth, knowing everything was OK
And I thought perhaps this is like death
The plunge we are taught to fear that ends in a kind of release
A comfort that Bruce Cockburn invokes with the verse…
‘Gentle bows and glasses raised to the charity of night’
Wave on wave of life
Like the great wide ocean's roll
Haunting hands of memory
Pluck silver strands of soul
The damage and the dying done
The clarity of light
Gentle bows and glasses raised
To the charity of night
---Bruce Cockburn
