Up Rising

Survival is overrated.
When you can bring yourself
to a pause or maybe a stop,
even when you're just three steps
up,
and there're twenty more to go
(or vice versa).
When it's easy
to cut the hands reaching for your throat
by thrusting
a silver jack into a port.
The music, the air,
when you can reclaim both
as your own.

Survival is overrated.
When you know
this will last forever (or not).
This green tenderness,
this soft, rhythmic flow
of the wind, the white light,
and that
nothing starts and stops with
you,
not even your faint heart
with its weak strengths
and strong fragilities.

Survival is overrated.

Up Rising

This is it.
This sense of calm ringing
in the ears,
the absoluteness of it,
the loftiness of it,
the softness
between the fingers, beneath the feet,
when you're beyond and above
the cries,
that old, familiar 'try try try'.
Cut this noise open and fly.
To your bones it enlivens you,
this lightness that engulfs you
when you no longer can tell
if you're lying down,
or floating,
or looking them in the eye.