“Fall”

 

c. 2024 Rod Ice

All rights reserved

(5-24)

 

 

An epic fall over ramparts of the kingdom

Dust from bricks and mortar, crumbled and spent

Surrendering silently to consequence

The end of a jump over the playground fence

Caught by a sleeve on an ornamental spike

A tumble into eternal night

Looking around to see if a witness might betray this failing

A one-armed dunce, foolishly flailing

Hung up like a rat in the sun

Swinging from its tail

I thought myself to be impervious and strong

But one verse of a hymn

Had me gasping and grim

With the desperate attitude of a protestant prude

Facing down a battle tank

A violent twist of the crank

Sending me forward

From where this unwelcome adventure began

Some might say that to have stepped on the cemetery grounds

Was in itself, a call for fate to intervene

Yet I did not glean

That meaning from my capricious promenade

Through the gloomy graves

It might have been enough to sit and sulk while the heat of day tanned my hide

Enough to honor those who had lived and died

Now, I will never know

Despite counting cracks in the sanctuary windows

A short jaunt up the stone path

No more than a dozen steps, perhaps

Right at the slope of a hillside

Next to the tree line

That is where I tasted grass like a bovine beast

Falling weakly, on my hands and knees

Coughing and cursing

Reflectively remembering

My wandering through histories, carefully preserved

Eerily sensing voices, long unheard

Knowing in my heart

That this episode was sired

By a lazy, lackluster complaint of feeling intellectually tired

Unengaged and never quite attached

Laughing, loafing

Boldly boasting

That though I had been laid low by this quirk of chance in effect

I took it as no more than a mother bird’s peck

On top of my skull

“Fly away, damned fowl!”

I warbled and growled

Then leveraged myself back to a vertical position

On the iron gate

Rusty and rattling from years of neglect

Howling on its hinges

And turned to look up at the sky

Humbled now with an inglorious resolve

To eschew mysteries in favor of certainty

A task not so slight in merit, or easy

That decision put me off balance in the morning dew

Slipping and sliding in my cobbled-up shoes

Not smart enough to think my way through the maze

Or patiently contemplate

Gravity holding sway

Bang on target

Lest I forget

Mortality makes me weep for the end

And celebrate in the same instant of glory

That this time

The bell did not chime

For me!