Waiting To Fall Poem by Danny Casteen

Waiting to Fall

The edge of a great loneliness stretches gray and green to meet
the black sky. I’ve smelled it on some level
For a lifetime.
The tang of salt and decay.
A bird watches me through one burnished eye,
tilts its head.

There are others here,
Men like me, and a boy
fifteen or so,
Black hair smooth over the tops of reddened ears,
The wings of a bird that watches.
And then I see another,
Like the men in form, but removed in fiber and structure and sweep.
In architecture.
The woman gazes past me,
Through me
Down the length of the pier.
Birds ride the currents above her.
Black heads sing and laugh to one another,
Marking their place in this sky.
They lift me in a way I don’t fully understand.
I want to glide with them.
Shout singing words with them.
I think I would give up this life to do it.

The woman looks to her left, past the men
trolling for their suppers before night falls, rusted bicycles fallen
like the dead on the splintered boards.
And to her right, a bridge span humps up.
A cat’s back holds back heaven.
The boy sees her now and their bodies incline,
Coupled in recognition.
And now they are close and their words
Join these others in the wind.
Prayers stirring wing feathers.
I’m frozen here,
A water dropp suspended,
Assembled by surface tension into this clockwork array,
Pregnant with yearning.

I am waiting to fall.

I look to the north, feel you watching, hear the words again,
But I am more than a collection of memories.
I am squarely in the path of time,
History and potential rush in from opposite poles,
Impending toward this now.
I am the common spike in the merging track.
I am golden.
I am a witness,
A molecule of this moment,
A glimmer of the whole.
And then it arrives,
a prayer that moves into me
But also out from me,
unconscious and pensive.
It passes through without passing and the change in me is subtle,
I feel connected to this place, this now, this feeling of knowing and unknowing.
And the old language speaks through me,
Or maybe I just think it but the thought is patent,
articulate
and the woman nods because she knows the truth when she hears it,
she is just afraid because fear is the driver,
the prime mover of the men and the boy and the woman
of all these prayers that drift
Like ghosts through the gathering night.

And I realize that the pain I feel in my belly is
Hunger, and – Caw – is the word for it too.
I know now what pain is for,
It moves us to some purpose.
The ocean covers the sky.
It spills over to cover the land.
The water calls itself Rain.
And I am falling,
Heading north now,
formless,
Manifest,
irrelevant,
Powerful.
I am the harmonic in the wave,
A spike in the oscillation,
My eyes numerous as the stars,
As grains of sand,
Lines of sight to infinite directions.
Glad for the axe.

And I realize there is no name for me.
I am no one.

I am not afraid.


By Danny