© Paul Zarzyski. All rights reserved. These words may not be reprinted or reposted without the author's written permission.

LEAPING NONE TOO SOON INTO LIGHTNESS

A settler having to set
the heaviest most cherished
heirloom along the trail
to some promised land, prairie
schooner sunk hubs-deep in mud,
oxen spent, anthems drenched, heart-
strings limp and soggy, yet not
altogether prayerless, I will arrive—
who knows where—whittled
down to sinew on my sixtieth,
helixes of tame shavings
whisked away in a birthday gale, riotous
dance in my every robust atom,
every molecule of lean
musical being, not one chaotic plod
left in my step, all lift,
all fabulous leap. I will be
salubrious, insouciant—big
muscular words perched in gondolas

of hot-air balloons, higher,
higher even than I believed at sixteen
I would forever drift free. Because
now, at fifty-six, I deconstruct
the metaphorical keepsake
Conestoga wagon bones—no reverse gear,
no rearview, tongue rotted, axles bowed—
collapsed and scattered out back, useless
as the tuned piano to the Sioux
warrior who spotted it from afar
sunk to its mahogany skull,
to its last sad glistening grimace, in gumbo
hardened by wind—this odd
symbol of sorrow
spooking both horse and Indian
brave, circling in, snorty,
awestruck, filled with song and thus
galloping off a cappella.