September 18, 2012

the jump

The longer I stood on the platform, of course, the colder
the water became,  the bed of small stones underneath
morphing into a sharp and catastrophic boulder.
I waited, shivering, gathering my guts through clenched teeth.
 
I don’t know, exactly, what it takes to make the jump,
what passageway we pull through to steel ourselves for departure.
The language for courage is so stripped of words, a lump
of a secret only the heart knows the translation to. And yet, unsure
as we are, we recognize the call from down below, and find the edge and leap
even when we don’t. Once we wake up, we can never fall asleep.