park bench green seat
sit close soft feet
pass by still street
stay calm breathe deep.
The Diver
I don’t want to fall in love,
because I never was that good with heights
Like the view you often see
At the summit of iron mountains,
flecked with carbon and plexiglass
I don’t want to fall in love,
because everyone looks like ants from here,
except their hills don’t wash away in the rain
that falls in small concentric droplets
from my eyes when I think of you down there
I don’t want to fall in love
because I always learned that dying in a dream
was worse than dying alive,
buried under the fragile weight of infatuation
and the suffocation of jubilation
I don’t want to fall in love
because the captain says we can’t stop for those
lost overboard, in the wake of admiration
where ‘liking you’ always turns to ‘crushing you’
And I don’t think we’d float
But I wouldn’t mind falling in love
out of an airplane with two wings,
thirty-five thousand feet high
because courage would make a great parachute
As long as we jumped together.
+++
Spring is four days away.