Under our boot soles
In memory of Jim Thomas
Once you stepped out an open window onto nothing
we could see from our desks, and for a whole
long second you floated and didn't fall
through two floors of air to the earth's something.
You never fell. You were just going smoking
before class on the unseen roof.
All of us saw you make that roof when you didn't fall.
You took drags, looked down, looked up, thinking.
Then you stepped back through the open window
and read us the end of “Song of Myself”
where the spotted hawk swoops and grass grows
under a boot. You were all voice, we were all ears.
Up ahead words with hollow bones wait
once you step onto nothing. We could hear.
.
by Dennis Finnell
from Ruins Assembling
Shape and Nature Press, Geenfield, Ma.2014