October 31st, 2008
TO LEVITATE…
My mother swears she saw
my baby brother rise from his cot
one stormy night when
we were living upstate.She was awake, checking the shutters,
when she saw him levitate,
a foot or more, covers rising
with him the way they doin carnival shows, so you don’t see
the wires. But, he lay soft and pliant,
a floater, weightless as
a shadow on the wall.“Something in the air,” Mother said,
because she believed in such things,
and reminded us often that most
children know how to fly.And I do remember running down a hillside,
breathless, the ground rising to meet me,
my heart lifting my blood
so effortlesslyI knew that if I stepped out onto the air
that it would hold me.
I may even have done it
without realizinghow easy it is, before doubt takes hold
and weds you to the ground.
Odd that we should forget
such things.Odd, too, when I tell the story
how no one believes exactly,
but the room gets quiet
and everyone listens.
–from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
Lovely, dream-like — its memories of childhood.
I am “into witches” in my writing and love the belief expressed here in the strange stunt of levitating so much a part of a witches means of movement as she makes her busy rounds. “Running down a hill, the ground rising to meet me” are words cleverly put into the mouth of a child as a ploy for convincing us heavy-to-move adults that this is possible. Transfering fact to young feeling saves the tenuous truth of the witch’s existenceand returns us to innocence and trust in our bodies so bullied by the necessities of work that so often replace joyous play.
love this poem- chills
A lovely poem. truly lovely.