To Levitate -- Cathryn Essinger

[aimlesswanderer.livejournal.com]

    To Levitate
    by Cathryn Essinger

    My mother swears she saw
                  my baby brother rise from his cot
                                one stormy night when
                                              we were living upstate.

    She was awake, checking the shutters,
                  when she saw him levitate,
                                a foot or more, covers rising
                                              with him the way they do

    in carnival shows, so you don’t see
                  the wires. But, he lay soft and pliant,
                                a floater, weightless as
                                              a shadow on the wall.

    “Something in the air,” Mother said,
                  because she believed in such things,
                                and reminded us often that most
                                              children know how to fly.

    And I do remember running down a hillside,
                  breathless, the ground rising to meet me,
                                my heart lifting my blood
                                              so effortlessly

    I knew that if I stepped out onto the air
                  that it would hold me.
                                I may even have done it
                                              without realizing

    how easy it is, before doubt takes hold
                  and weds you to the ground.
                                Odd that we should forget
                                              such things.

    Odd, too, when I tell the story
                  how no one believes exactly,
                                but the room gets quiet
                                              and everyone listens.