after the fall

And because it is fall, darkness will shadow the northwest;
and because it is late in this century,
darkness will be in the air you breathe.
And because you are human, darkness
has come from your hand,
your mouth,
and it thickens around your heart
like fat around a liver: you will never
know enough.
For you are alive”

-Jan Zwicky

What light? It is easiest to ask this question at dawn in the late fall
when the sun does not come in until after seven and I sit with the kitchen
dark at my side and the hallway dark at my side and there is light
nowhere.

Just a few days ago, a man jumped from space and broke the sound barrier.

Imagine the light. What would the ground feel like after that, or
being in love or being at all? Imagine the exhaustion. The need
to no longer be part of life. 1100 km an hour rushing towards
what he had left behind. Imagine being the heart of space and earth
for a few moments the core of heat in iced air plummeting
to the ground just to feel once again that there is solid dirt under
your feet and know you have touched earth in a way that you cannot touch
space but you have touched space in the same breath as having touched
earth. Is love better after that or weaker, diluted like sunlight keeping asphalt
on a long highway passing a truck stop between fields of starved grass:
do we keep driving because there is still gas in the tank because we are
facing forward because there is really too much space between us
and the turn-off

Or do we hit the brakes and let the tires spin for a split second a split
second of contemplating death just to feel that close to something just to
get that copper taste in the mouth get saliva at the back of the teeth and clutch
your thighs with sweaty palms knowing that this is what you wanted all along

Is it the same thing, plummeting through light and sound breaking
sound barriers every time you open your mouth hoping against hope thin as a windshield
that it might be the same?