It started as a lark that spring. A few of us piled into someone’s seen-better-days automobile and drove, without a clue, toward that tiny airport covered in haze.
We were trying, I guess, to forestall all thought of the coming fall, who we would be without school. We practiced jumps, I recall, while a tiny plane circled, light and free,
as things do when leaving. The month before—- it seemed an eternity—-my brother perished. An icy turn drove him through his dark door too early, while still raw and unfinished.
Now, we were told to keep leaping off crates. Then it was time to climb into the craft, with glass altimeters strapped to our chests, to rise over fields, to plunge into updraft.
For me, this was dull aftermath, mute ode to April, busy mixing her dead land hues—-memory, desire—-for me to decode, if I could, remake them with my own hand
later, after we limped that night to the fire ring, shaken but standing, glasses and voices lifting.
Leslie Schultz
public domain photo by Guenther Dilligen (pixabay)
Thank you for sharing this thoughtful reading of “Freefall.”
“Freefall” is one of the hardest of your poems for me. I don’t mean in terms of my understanding, although I may not understand it exactly as you intended, but in terms of the aching paradox of life demanding that we keep on living and yet, there are those deadening things, like your brother’s death. Never thought the word “freefall” would capture that so well, but it certainly does in the context of this poem.
Brave of you to share, Leslie!
Once was very interesting…but quite enough for me. A powerful experience that wasn’t what I expected, and one I am still thinking about decades later.
Love the imagery of the young people “limping” to a the fire pit after a day of adrenaline pumping experience. Will you ever do that again? Or will that one time hold you over for awhile….
Thank you for sharing this thoughtful reading of “Freefall.”
“Freefall” is one of the hardest of your poems for me. I don’t mean in terms of my understanding, although I may not understand it exactly as you intended, but in terms of the aching paradox of life demanding that we keep on living and yet, there are those deadening things, like your brother’s death. Never thought the word “freefall” would capture that so well, but it certainly does in the context of this poem.
Brave of you to share, Leslie!
Once was very interesting…but quite enough for me. A powerful experience that wasn’t what I expected, and one I am still thinking about decades later.
Love the imagery of the young people “limping” to a the fire pit after a day of adrenaline pumping experience. Will you ever do that again? Or will that one time hold you over for awhile….