Today's poem is by David Wagoner
Free Fall
At first he's making better and better time
in his descent toward an unavoidable
necessarily inevitable
conclusion against a remarkable-looking surface
no longer keeping its distance or its place
in the scheme of things and then the worldly limit
of acceleration thirty-two feet per second
per second in free fall will slow his body down
to a rough four hundred while he enjoys
the interval to notice the steadily
increasing size of the earth the inexorable
enlargement of its horizon the revelation
of all its topographical details
its clarifying and intensifying colors
and shades of meaning if he were a mouse
or any smaller creature and had the luck
to land where he wouldn't immediately be drowned
impaled or run over he'd go bouncing away
as good as new but as a heavyweight
contender and thinker he comes down now
to earth with entirely too much emphasis.
Copyright © 2007 David Wagoner All rights reserved
from Southwest Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission
Support Verse Daily
Sponsor Verse
Daily!
Home
Archives
Web Monthly Features
About Verse Daily
FAQs
Submit to Verse Daily
Publications Noted & Received
Copyright © 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 Verse Daily
All Rights Reserved