“Though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong, for the Lord upholds his hand.”
In the terrifying
nothingness
of the vacuum,
a brittle autumn leaf
falls as fast
as a heavy stone,
the shattering impact
fatal.
But break the seal,
let the world-mothering
air congeal,
and see that same leaf
float slowly down,
rocking back and forth
as gently as a
baby in a cradle.
World-mothering air is a phrase from Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem The Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe