Such a Careless Thing

Such a Careless Thing*

---

"Will you walk a little faster?"
said a whiting to a snail,
"There's a porpoise close
          behind us,
and he's treading on my tail."
                                                         ---Carroll
---

I jumped once.

Only
once.

I remember feeling terrified that I might fall
before
the jumpmaster rapped my knee to signal
it's time

to
let
go.

My deadened ears damped 
by escaping cockpit/
engine clatters,

the tender insides
of my nose
smarting
from acrid stinks
of oil and metal,

my eyelids squinting,
eyeballs tearing,

I stood on one leg, leaned/
strained forward
to grasp the wing’s trailing edge,
the wind blowing

so
fiercely,

with such a thin ledge separating my fear-filled foot
and other quaking body parts from outer space.

Letting go … such a careless thing to do.

Like
giving
up.

Like quitting.
Like giving in.

Like
falling
out of
control.

Like experiencing
nanoseconds
of unconsciousness,
nanoseconds
of sunlit daylight's dimming

sharply
to night.

Like dying.

Like trusting myself.
And whoever
packed
the parachute.

That person so unknown to me.
A stranger.

Like
jumping
from
a cliff.

Without
feathers,
with not
a wing.

Moments later I felt the tug,
then rocked,
then recognized,
too belatedly,

that the goddamned chute had truly opened,
that my chances of getting through this alive
had just been upgraded.

Relief.
Then peace.

A time granted to experience the view, the surreal
silence, the nervous flutter of the chute aripple
somewhere above my head.

Then, finally, the crash into ground impossibly
hard, a panicked few minutes transpiring

(literally minutes, yes; no hyperbole here)

waiting to see if feeling returned to my body
below the belt line.

Not knowing if it would.

A couple of guys running in my direction.
A shout, “Are you OK?”

I didn’t answer,
then said,

“I
don’t
know.”

So anxious I was.

Then, by painful microdegrees …