Lifted

Lifted
without warning
from the place where I had been
for such a long time
that I had learned to disbelieve,

had forgotten that the sky
could be anything more
than a backdrop for the mold
of the dark floors and dusty ceilings
where I was living,

I looked up
at the direction I was heading
and saw clouds
moving, shaping themselves
as they raced across my trajectory.

I found soon enough
that once I entered one
I’d be wrapped in gray
and cold
and wet,

but also discovered
that even inside that brief misery
there was light, and because I kept rising
I could never lose my way
completely and fall back to where I had been.

Lifted this way, head and eyes
keeping watch, heart not far behind,
my hands calm at last, I rose
(and continue to rise) toward the day
when breathing will be unimportant

except as it stops, perhaps only for a short time,
when I first see the stars. I am unwilling now
to assume that moment will be my last,
for I have learned so much that I never believed
could be true since I first was raised up;

this is the school of levitation, and I am a student
of the breaking of gravity’s hold upon anything,
even upon one who had once been
intimate with filth and the scent of the grave.
I will rise, not fall, to be one with what I see.