The Laws of Gravity
Gravity insists on pulling everything to the ground.
I press my ear to the floor, listen for the light buzz
of the furnace humming beneath the boards.
Surely the weight of a great force gathers.
Stewing like a giant tar-pit, the dirt of our lives
must softly pool and boil.
I know it is there.
In silent moments I can almost hear it.
Yes, it is there.
I hear it when I am on my knees,
when I am in line at the grocery store,
in the old French of Memérès
clucking over the tabloids.
I hear it when waiting for the traffic light
to click from red to green.
I hear it in the sound of my dog lapping at her water bowl.
In Mozart, piecing together the laws of apples
and feathers in a language without words.
It feeds the tulips, hardening in the freeze.
It moves in the pace of a woman on the street.
Our talk betrays it, the turning of the earth,
the rise of the sun, the fall of the sun, on and on.
In the small act of setting down lines.
A stranger’s sigh. We are pulled to the ground.
We muffle our words, protect our heads.
Insects blindly wind through the dust,
subject to a law deeper than what we read in books.
They live in the spoils of what we refuse to see.
They know what we so often ignore:
How when you drop a thing,
it always lands dirty side down.
Copyright 2007 by the Tipton Poetry Journal.
All rights remain the exclusive property of the individual poet and may not be used without their permission.