This morning, waking from long
voluptuous sleep
I felt my life warm to this warming
world, and then fall away. The ledge
not crumbled beneath me
but pulled back,
as I stood at its edge.
Like that tablecloth trick
where the settings remain in place –
all my pieces intact as I fell
through the pine tops,
my mind loosening –
its language
the first to salute the velocity.
With my feet still on the granite
I looked up to see an osprey
flying just overhead,
a trout secure in its talons,
the fish’s tail swimming through the wind.
I saw the yellow glint of its scales,
the flesh torn from a struggle,
then as if magic,
a drop of warm blood in my hair.