Gravitas

It was never about our dumb thumbs.
It was the way we stood up
to gravity
without needing to know what we have
pushed up against, the faceless force
of resistance that throws its weight in waves
that crash out of sight and none mind this weakness
the stacking of back bones.

The clock, the book, ape our names with a smirk and a stick
shows you his ant collections, meanwhile, the snake swallows its tail.

Pounds and heartbeats resist this ethereal oppression
that taunts us to compete with what we have,
as though a winner was ever chosen,
as if hope had more than clipped wings with whimsical wants
and rings only of brass cages,

only light easily escapes our local prisons,
with motion detectors triggered we creep
like suspicion
reflection and persistence and say we are seekers

what gathers as cumulous clouds all comes
back down to dirt before clay
this way something is from nothing

the spinal column rachets and secures its connections
between inside out, an idea, a step in the right foot first
direction of brave, giants leaps of grace
loss of place

higher than vertigo knows
makes me think
there was nowhere to grow
up is out.

I doubt our thumbs
gave us a free ride.
Gravity takes no sides.




Painting by Claude Monet, Heavy Seas at Pourville (1897) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.