Falling Down

No one else can fall down for you.
It's all your own
embrace with gravity
and the intimate percussion of splat.

That!
That's the face
we all know firsthand
rising up through hands stinging
like the smallest sands of fire.

And I can imagine the earliest man
followed your ritual lead:
standing up, wiping his hands
down his hairy pants
and then clapping two or three times
in the way that has come to mean,
"I'm done with this."



by jerry gordon
inspired by seeing a 2 year-old boy trip and fall
9.13.05