My Man Jumped Off a Cliff

Each step needs a foot to sum the fall. 

Of course this happened in the low valley 

and each step needed a foot. Some days during

that fall love was not a version of yourself you

ever cared to play at, and to prune, you told me

you’d be pinching off each sepal of the flower

to make the core of it, the bright flower 

go the distance, be the only thing. I said that’s

how you kill a bud, I said that each step 

is a foot that sums the fall. Of course 

this was in the lowest beach, and for 

the rest of this story we climbed duned arroyos

where shoreline mansions led lives of glass. 

Some things are just lowly, some of us 

are just the same. Each step needs a foot 

to sum the fall. If you felt the wind you didn’t say it

even though the world entire knows the wind,

you’re not a newcomer, you have fingers. 

One night in the mansion you heard a tall tale

and the tallness of it kept you up at night. 

From the crepe paper peppering the daylight

to the waddling night, air was in you. 

Try now to get a clean grasp of it. Go to the edge

where each step needs a foot. The fall wind chisels

out a dead moth stuck in a root knee. That’s

where you can see things, bond with them. Trace

the shape of the lake 

play it in your way, spin the hurdy gurdy 

with each treelimb telling you in the climb 

that each step needs a foot 

to sum the leaf-fall. They’re played out. 

But this isn’t a tree, and this isn’t a path anymore for feet.

You said, at the last, with the air so clear, here be birds.