No. 7

Fall 2004

Do you want to remain completely unharmed?
                                                         -Jorie Graham

My husband tells of the time he parachuted
          on a dare from his son,
how unflaggingly mindful he was
          of the door of the plane

slamming open against the hard slap
          of sky, how his hands on the struts
turned to iron claws as the trainer shouted
          Jump. He was the first

in line that day, the first to feel the steel
          moment, the jarring of unfaith,
the sloop of body as something separate.
          Even so, he flung himself

backward into the arms of a six o'clock
          sky, hung there in that element
he had accepted as part of his life-script,
          a nimbus of silence around him

despite the plane ratcheting overhead
          dropping other fliers,
the thwap as his parachute
          ballooned above.

I fling myself into this time
          before I knew him,
a life he couldn't know I'd enter, when
          his leaps and longings

had not yet touched any idea of me.
          There are so many ways to leave
the ground, to put yourself at the mercy
          of ripcords and luck.

Copyright 2004, Elizabeth Volpe

nidus is an online publication supported by the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh's English Department.