The Fall

Like fledglings their small bodies will fall--
                  that's what I fear:
        children at the window
pushing, leaving, laughing
at the attraction of teasing gravity, the lure
          of a moment's flight against it.
And what if they fall
                for that seduction?
          What they fall to
will also fall to oblivion.  Oh, I want it too,
                   but I turn it down
every time, like bed covers
against the cold                    denied.
Now that they have fallen
               through me into the world
      from the desert before,
                       I argue
for their preservation, for their staying
long enough to wing above it all
                like great birds.
For a moment, maybe, they will lean
               in to my solicitude--then,
       laughing again, lean away...
                                too far!
They will argue with me for all the world,
for all the windows
                 at any height.
I see them at the edge
        making their precarious bargains--
        taking their basket of chances
                         as close as they can get.
At my distance,
the range of too much vision
                 shuts me down at heart.
                        In fear I fall
down the well of my own spirit, downhearted,
                down life, semiprecious.
That's when the dead
                weight of my grasp falls
loose like a stone egg and from the window
of its cracked shell emerges immense one full
         grown eagle.
                Rising, its wingspan breaks the fall
of sunlight to the sill, shadow a sudden blind
         against the open heart of window.
Dark pushes the children back into the square
        freedom of the room as if beaten
        by the drum of wing on air, eyes and ears
stunned.  I can see the bird fragment, overlap
                                  as eagle girl, eagle boy:
              boy, eagle beak, boy
     knee,girl teeth, eagle talon, child
                                     strand of light
brown feathered hair: until the children finally
                    are gone, are fallen
through their time                    and into the full
          grown bodies of women and men, with the eyes
                 of farsighted birds, life risked by life.


Alice B. Fogel