The Brave Child Poem by Gregory Orr

How, on a dare, he would dive where the stream
eddied back on itself, down
to a deepest bottom dark with the rot
of logs and leaves, then like a little
Lazarus rise

with the oozing proof clutched in his fist.
Or, on a ladder nailed to the loft wall,
would climb toward a roof where pigeons
rattled and cooed, hang from a beam
high over hay, then,
with arms spread like a Christ ascending,
fall through the dust-filled air.