Falling - Carl Phillips
There's a meadow I can’t stop coming back to, any
more than I can stop calling it a sacred grove-isn’t
that was it was, once? A lot of resonance, trees asway
with declarations whose traced-on-the-air patterns
the grasses also traced, more subtly, below. As for
strangers: yes, and often, and-with few exceptions-
each desperate either to win back some kingdom he’d
lost, or to be, if only briefly, for once free of one. I did
what I could for them. They did-what they did ... It was
as if we were rescuable, and worth rescuing, both, and
the gods had noticed this-it was as if there were gods-
and the sky meanwhile crowning every part of it, blue,
a blue crown ... There's a meadow I still go back to. It’s
just a meadow-with, sometimes, a stranger, passing
through, the occasional tenderness, a hand to my chest,
resting there, making me almost want to touch something,
someone back. I can feel all the wrecked birds-lying
huddled, slow-hearted, like so many stunned psalms,
against each other-start to stir inside me, their bits of
song giving way again to the usual questions: Why not
stay awhile here forever? and Isn't this what you keep
coming for? and Is it? I'm tired of their questions. I'm
tired, I say to them-as, with all the sluggishness at first
of doing a thing they'd forgotten how to do, or forgotten
to want to, or had only hoped to forget, they indifferently
open, spread wide their interrogative, gray wings-
more than I can stop calling it a sacred grove-isn’t
that was it was, once? A lot of resonance, trees asway
with declarations whose traced-on-the-air patterns
the grasses also traced, more subtly, below. As for
strangers: yes, and often, and-with few exceptions-
each desperate either to win back some kingdom he’d
lost, or to be, if only briefly, for once free of one. I did
what I could for them. They did-what they did ... It was
as if we were rescuable, and worth rescuing, both, and
the gods had noticed this-it was as if there were gods-
and the sky meanwhile crowning every part of it, blue,
a blue crown ... There's a meadow I still go back to. It’s
just a meadow-with, sometimes, a stranger, passing
through, the occasional tenderness, a hand to my chest,
resting there, making me almost want to touch something,
someone back. I can feel all the wrecked birds-lying
huddled, slow-hearted, like so many stunned psalms,
against each other-start to stir inside me, their bits of
song giving way again to the usual questions: Why not
stay awhile here forever? and Isn't this what you keep
coming for? and Is it? I'm tired of their questions. I'm
tired, I say to them-as, with all the sluggishness at first
of doing a thing they'd forgotten how to do, or forgotten
to want to, or had only hoped to forget, they indifferently
open, spread wide their interrogative, gray wings-