For everyone, freefall must be a poetic experience. Just as, for their perspectives, a teacher and then a poet will be sent on the Space Shuttle, so too should we try to see the poetry of freefall is written. A poet might capture that eternal moment in a net of words, and give it to us forever.

I am not a poet, but I know that there is nothing like whipping through the air at incredible speed towards diminutive fields and farms only a ripcord from oblivion, sailing through a volume of air that is live and sentient and muttering low like thwarted death, a vast, vast force that merely tolerates our trifling, and perhaps may be biding its time. Whether it is tame or treacherous

I am not yet able to tell. But I know that it is huge.

We can say that it is a life-force there in freefall, with all of the power and aspects of life intensified and made more immediate. We will never live more vividly. Someone should write our poetry, even if it is enough to us that we live it for moments at a time.

 

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