as if in the same way the Greek philosopher suggested, believing the speed at which two objects fall is directly proportional to their weight and inversely proportional to the medium through which they plummet. In this, he may have been more poet than philosopher; surely, more than his famous mentor who in fact wished to turn poets out of the city gates. In the late 1500s, a young mathematician dropped two lead spheres of unequal weight from a tipping- over tower, disproving common knowledge then about gravity. How old this light, which used to fall gold-gilded through the summer months, but now hides its face in the umbral hours; and how old our disquiet from the speed with which the darkness could take us. The weight we bear or don't bear, traversing a forest of years. Alluvial earth, monsoons. Does it matter we can't even pinpoint the actual cause of our distress? Our bodies move toward the same ground at more or less the same speed: in one hand, a feather; in the other, that aggregate of fire and flickering; bright gashes, lighthouse beams which we call a life.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.