I watch birds falling from trees.

In my peripheral, I think they are leaves.
Leaves that fall with too much density and hasten to be leaves.
I find they are birds and they are falling,
bird after bird after bird, out of the tree.

Like whole teeth
out of closed mouths.

Like good sons
from the congregation.

The fall is long and strenuous.
The great thud is a comfort.
The sound of bones cracking, the taste of copper,
the process of soaking slowly into the pavement.

To “hit rock bottom” is a passionate ache.

It's okay to fall, I want to say.
To the birds and the sons and,
most especially, the teeth.

It's okay to want to fall. That's allowed.
A homeless man nearby staggers
across the parking lot and over a curb.

When I turn back the birds have finished their falling,
I assume. Or have slithered back up and into
their teeth like gums like pews
for certain death, destruction by totality.

Tethered suspension is secure,
creates a harness spun of fear: the lack of trust
warrants a vacant sense of well-being.

But falling – that brief moment of pure, unadulterated suspension – is celestial.
The floor of the pit is saturated with grace and valor.
The atoms of your liquidated body disperse, become the forces of gravity.