The Wall Arch falls in Utah
after spending tens of thousands of years
holding itself up against erosion.
A locust tree falls in Gettysburg
after one hundred and fifty years
of holding itself up against
bullets and cannonballs and blood, after
holding itself close to Lincoln
as he spoke there.
The poet Shannon Leigh falls into dark water,
holding herself against the need
to see her life through
once she knew that it had been enough
to live as strongly as she had.
Ken Hunt falls, Angela Boyce falls,
Pat Storm falls, Lisa King falls, Scott
Kirkpatrick falls.
Some days it seems that everything is falling.
All the poets are falling, all the natural wonders
I’ve known are tumbling down head over sole
leaving me with more answers than questions
than I was willing to ask when they were still among us,
upright, appearing as if they would never die;
and now Mahmoud Darwish falls as Palestine falls, years
of people crushed, starved, burned;
people fall in olive groves and fail in shanty towns,
raising his words against their dim future
in order to recall
how things can change
even when they seem most
immutable.
In the August night I stop for a moment to say
that I fear I am no arch, no witness tree,
no name others will use to conjure hope after I’m gone.
The ground itself shakes me into terror daily
as I look at the way I live, the way I have lived:
coward, passer-by, content more often
to marvel at the courage of others
and the endurance of the Earth
than I have been to pull my own bravery out
and try it on;
set-up more often than punchline,
killer more often than savior, mayhem in my voice
more often than healing; give me strength, I have said,
give me strength to be the rock that doesn’t crumble —
forgetting that to crumble is the way of all things,
and that what endures is not the thing itself
but its spirit, its flavor carried forward
on the wind of the planet.
I am no hero, not in this life.
I am no wonder
worth seeing, not today.
But things can change.
Dark Matter 