Fall

From this rough vision —

From this echoed space of afternoon —

I did not know where we would go.

 

You hovered over hushed landscapes:

Acrophobic parapets of ancient rock and air flutes:

White string of rivers painting vertigo horizons

In aerial velocities of the spinning sun.

 

In a flash of the long view,

Fallen climbers arced in slipping grips of passion –

A bone and dust of great distances,

Releasing orthoimages of the eye’s final light.

 

From moments of the Fall –

Far below, crows drifted like dark gondolas

Along the axon’s drained canal.

 

From this rough vision,

With a mounting cartography of shadows,

Wind in ending destinies filled a still point of the held breath.

 

In a flash of the long view,

It was an altitude of grace over the singular afternoon –

It was ending, and it was going to end.

There were last autumn colors getting closer in lines of vertigo horizons –

Advancing detail of landscapes –

And I did not know where we would go.