artwork: ralph murre
The Price of Gravity
by
Ralph Murre
How
much of this life do we own?
Payments
are always coming due.
We
are the ones who signed the papers,
but
there’s something more,
there’s
something that can’t be helped.
You
and I look different
than
we did in morning light.
Now
we wade in lead boots
and
gather no speed
away
from this dead center,
or
toward something brighter.
Which
is to say away from here,
where
the embers have dwindled.
Which
is to say we can fly only
with
the creatures of dreams,
if
we can fly at all.
The
dreams will become family,
the
dreams will become clan,
scattered
like dust among stars
in
the cages of our ribs,
in
the cages of our cries,
in
our breath in the night.
Sometimes
the dreams may be of falling
and
cold earth rushing to us,
but,
travelers now,
they’ll
call us travelers,
amid
the dust
and
the stars
where
we’ve known the dark eclipse,
and
we’ve flown with
those
creatures of dreams
between
galaxies.
We
won’t be in lead boots
once
we’ve started to dream.
We’ll
no longer make payments
on
things that hold us down.
This
is not the end of this poem --
something
pulls at us forever.
~
first published in Iconoclast
