Like a mist stealing over cold ground,
slow thing, damp and warm and alive.
My body falls into its center as if from
some great height, as if I'd climbed
and climbed and settled in the crotch
of a huge tree limb, clung to rough bark.
And now, for some reason, I've let go.
Fear leaps green from my groin, rises
to my gut, I smell earth rushing to meet
my face as I fall. Too late. I don't
remember how to fly. All this must have
happened long ago, in some other life
when I knew subtleties of wind, long
before I learned the art of grasping hands.
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