Dear Gravity, by Rita Mae Reese |
This morning I heard the bird in burden—the song
of it—and remembered something about light—the speed of it, yes, and the separating of it from darkness. But I thought too of how lucky fireflies are to be of little economic importance. I thought about human beings—a clever way water devised to move itself around the planet—to defy you, dear gravity. Water using star dust as vehicles. We are watery stars that you hold close, so close we believed we were wholly yours but this morning a little bird reminded me that we are really creatures of light, light which is a millionbillionbillionbillionbillion times stronger than you, dear gravity. Even when you’ve pulled us down into our graves, we escape your grasp and become the light inside of flight— |
Poet and fiction writer Rita Mae Reese is the author of the poetry collections The Book of Hulga (2016), which won the Felix Pollak Prize, and The Alphabet Conspiracy (2011), which won the 2012 Drake Emerging Writers Award. Find out more at https://ritamaereese.com/