the third morning after the fall

The third morning after the fall

            I am a rumpled muscle,

            heaped in the perfect

            unremembered kick off

            of the furnace

            of the night.  Imagine each

            tendon frisking its neighbor

            like a cheek against a breast, or

            the puckered and pursed pull

            all draw and swallow.  The trust

            in the suck is the ungodly

            beauty of instinct—the drain

            straight down through need.  See

            I didn’t intend to fall—I’ve wanted

            each step to matter—all twelve—

            which to this day I count.  It was

            dark.  My house

            inhaled slowly.  Outside was breaking,

            bone breaking, cold.  And I fell

            inside of it, still

            breathing.  My arms were wide

            enough to receive

            the whole world, and the way they waited

            in the dark, in the quiet,

it was, I remember, the way I waited

            to hear if my son would live:

            a concussion deep as sounding

            all that way down, and though

            there’s still no bottom

            to feel the voice out, the push

            through the throat's a groan.

            It is all I can manage.  And the wait

            is its own reply.  And all those places

            that need to swell do, and the bruise,

            all along the spine and under,

            puckers before it spreads

            beneath the surface, an ink

            of absolute purpose though I’m not sure              

            today what it would write.