81) The Feeling of Falling

I hesitate to put my fingers to keys.
Words are too solid.  Once produced, they sit, motionless, changeless, static. 
Even the most poetic depiction of something that moves, breathes, sparks into life, 
Is like a box, with solid sides and a solid bottom and a solid lid
Encapsulating whatever is inside
In the confines of its walls

But what I feel has no walls
Fits in no box
Cannot be captured or tamed or ‘encapsulated’ by anything static and
Unchanging

How do you use words to describe the subtle dance of wind and trees?
How can a poet depict the way two bodies fit together, 
Move together, breathe together, gasp together, sigh together, laugh together?
What language can respect the profound stirring of a heart, 
Rising like mist over a mirrored lake in the quiet morning
As rays of sunlight penetrate the darkness
Warming the air, enlightening the land beneath
And coaxing the water back into the freedom
Of the sky?

My hand knows a soft perfection that my mind can only understand 
As a dream,
Knows curves that fit my palm 
Like the sky fits the albatross’ wing.
My fingers know what it feels like
To grip
A galaxy that seems it could only be fashioned
To be their glove.

My eyes are sore with sleeplessness,
And shining with an inner light
As though a campfire was lit in my heart 
And now its light pours from every cell
Unbidden, but unstoppable.

I know I have fallen
But not down, somehow fallen up
As though gravity has been revealed as a mere
Limiting belief
And loneliness is
Just a concept, a distant memory that must simply be
A story I heard once, 
About a person long ago.

I must rise now, 
Slip back into this person the world knows as “me,”
Move out into other people’s awarenesses,
Smile and talk and sit down to break bread with friends
And good souls.

I fear that some part of me will remain here, 
In this quiet cocoon of private bliss
Forever.
But, I know the truth is far more wonderful than that
For there is no cocoon, 
Just a release of thankful wonder
Back into the interpenetrating flows of 
That which I’ve always been.