DD 11/6/07 PATTIANN ROGERS POEM

I WAS AT MY NIECE'S BAT MITZVAH THIS WEEKEND WITH MY BROTHER DAVID, WHO, AS HE OFTEN DOES, TURNED ME ON TO A POET I HAD NEVER KNOWN OF BEFORE.
THE FEAR OF FALLING
Pattiann Rogers
It comes from the tree apes, this instinct
To grasp, to fill the hollow of the hand
And fasten. Emerging from the womb,
How each must have clawed, grabbing before breathing,
Its mother's hairy knee,the slip of her rump.
Imagine the weak, the unimpressed, dropping
Through leaves like stones to the ground below
.
The mind has become itself inside the panic
Of bodies falling with fingers spread useless.
How many times in the jerk of sleep
Has the last hand-hold been seen
Disappearing upward like a small bird sucked into space?
Bound to the clenching habit of the fingers, united
With the compulsion of the hands to grasp, the mind
Perceives in terms of possession,recognizing
Its lack from the beginning -- the black fur
Of the void,the bowl of the wide belly,the dark
Of that great invented thigh out of reach.
The first need of the brain is to curl
The conceptual knuckles and tighten.
And whether it is on each warm-weather crack
At the bottom of the sea or on every maneuver
Of the swamp muskrat or around the grey spiral
Details of forgiveness, the grip of the brain
Is determined not to be negligible.
Here in the wind at the top of these branches
We recognize
The persistent need to take hold of something
Known to be sure-footed