Take Me Falling

Many times I've come close to meeting my end, and never has it taken so long as this past weekend, given me so much time to think. I wanted to put into words something, and I'm not sure this does it justice or not. What it means is deeper than I can think about right now. It is a blueprint for future pondering? It is just youth-glossed ignorance? A fool thinking he's tricked the psychic? This poem is about falling, being grabbed up and brought back down to earthy grounds. It is a allegory to the thill of high places and the feeling I've had there and the risk that slumbers there, more awake than in most places.

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Whispered so softly, your ears hurt to listen to the gentle calm
Awakened eyes speak no words at all, but fire seethes in them
The complicity of your life politely forgotten
The collusion of these high places to defy you without trying
They are not alive, but they are something more than dead
There below secreted away the lands of men and beast cannot perplex
The clouds and fog from which you rose above separate
Purified of mind, sequestered from home you are revealed in these high places
The magic is no fairy-tale
They are revealed naked of their clothes and recognized for the rock and ice they are
A million expressions can be seen of every face of them, in the shadows and the sun
No words are needed to speak, you need not listen, you need not see
Close your eyes and stand atop, let them perceive you there
They will know you

But leave you must to realms beneath this sky-bound sphere of sharpened blue and bright lights
Shed of you, this mountain cries
Takes you falling through cloud and fog, screams these places below a wailing song
Be cast off chiseled cheek and be accompanied alone to where mortal sleeps
As for the fire in your eyes, whence a flame burns, it will cool only after all is reduced to ashes
Gravity is a tonic best served in lower plains; where so high you’ve time to ponder
Life has blazed day to day, year to year; such appetite you’re a-facing your greatest fears
But hunger feels so empty when you’ve been so high and so lonely when you look into its eye
When plummeting one must land; if luck is forgetful as it was for you, remember
Life is to be hankered for
It is not given, nor is it taken
We trip over our thinking of it; some learn to walk while others learn to fly
As chicks first flight from nest, the ground is soft or the ground is hard or you learn to soar
For those that don’t, they seek higher ground and try once more to be set free
But it’s not for you, so stay down from divine
Close your ears; close those eyes; reminisce your spirit above
Accounts are settled, but you know you will return