As We Approach the Days of Awe

by Jim Elledge

What is so difficult is the scale of the
disaster: both greater than you can imagine
and smaller than you can believe.
--Adam Gopnik
The New Yorker


Still damp with dew from the moment
          just before, still blue
          as morning's
          breeze, the first
          sliver--a splinter, really--
          falls from the first window,
          falls point down whetting
itself against the friction gravity provides.

Who could've foreseen it slipping through
          such sparkling air? How
          sunlight--so bright,
          so luscious this
          morning--slipped through it, too,
          then out, and fanned:
          a smear of colors
as minute as momentary in freefall?

Who could've foreseen how easily velocity
          and grace merge?
          How easily
          the moment just after
          would become
          occupied territory:
a blur of air, a swarm of bodiless wings?

As the splinter falls, History jabs ice picks
          into its ears, Biology
          slits its wrists, and Religion
          shoves a fist down its
          throat. But the glass sliver
          tows the line Physics
          dictates and falls, falls
all the way down into an eye of the beholder.