The river plucks the glass strings of the sky
& their hum slips soft against my ankles,
on this afternoon we are painted
with mirrors & colors I remember
from photos of outer planets,
all light & all dark, jewels
in between; bright as she
kindly tugs me toward
a boulder that parts her
like a sawblade; I shudder

& watch pale blooms of foam
gather, wreathing an eddy.
Will today be the day I fall?
Will I yield to the current?

Skystruck & crumbling as nerves twist
into floodgates & I will slip under
the glow, under this surface of light,
to scream soundless into the cold breast
of the valley — truth & fiction ringing
the same in escape, mellowed by
the murmur of the water around
the rocks, of life at ebb.

But before I take the world into my lungs, before
I surrender to the feeling that I have already fallen,
let me straighten against this spell. I know the water
is cold & fast but I am still, I am unmovable,
my foolish heart burns like the center of the sun.
Let me release the ghost of the fall, let my fingers slip
between the strings of the sky, glass & bright, let them
knot & braid & twist in me. & as the river sings her reply
I am alive, ankle deep in this world, & reminded that
I will be cold again soon.