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Falling It comes in the middle of the night just when you realize you forgot to lock the back door. Glass shatters and you recall sandlot games when a home run meant hiding in the bushes. Flick the bathroom light, find a hole. Broken tiles, a strange rock. You want to pick it up, but TV has taught you to treat it like a crime scene. Better call the authorities. No doubt, they’ll carry it away to some undisclosed lab, study what we’re not supposed to know. The reporter says it’s golden, heavy as a can of soup, not radioactive. Neighbors in bathrobes scan their lawns with metal detector eyes, eager to seize a little tabloid fame, secretly wish such things would fall into their homes. They ask if you saw lights. You want to say yes. Maybe you will. Or maybe you remember that piece of you still falling into someone else’s life — so sudden, so dangerous, it had to be taken away. Michael Beadle is a poet, teaching artist, magazine editor and freelance writer living in Canton, N.C. He is the author of two poetry collections, An Invented Hour and Friends We Haven't Met, and a poetry CD, Kaboom. next table of contents |
