Let Fly

Let Fly

Flying is what happens before you
keel from the nest
or peel from the sky,
fall hard to the ground,
soften it
with your rot. 

Rotting is what happens before
the earth breathes open,
exhales something tender and green
and hungrily snacking
on leftovers of you.

Leftover you is a wide buffet,
a table strewn across the world,
atom-sized offerings in plated array,
as if life depends
on the volume of your
letting go. 

Your life depends
on the volume
of your letting go.

Photo by Swiss Educational College on Unsplash

The Prompt

Everywhere I look, I see death . . . and life . . . and death and life, in endless cycling. Everywhere I look (here in America), I see a culture built around denial of death, denial of our finitude and fallibility and of the fact that we humans are just one little part of this vast web. Maybe we imagine that if we puff ourselves up big enough, if we claim enough space and enough stuff, if we choke out other forms of life, that will lend us an immortality of sorts. I don’t want to be immortal—not in that way. But every day, I slough off atoms that are picked up by birds and trees, so I have wings, and I have leaves. (Ooooh, look at that! I just wrote an accidental poem there!)

If you would like a poem to play with today, then I offer you the words letting go. What have you let go of lately? Consider answers that are both literal (carbon dioxide, metabolized food waste, that trunk-load of odds and ends you dropped off at Good Will) and more figurative (an expectation, a story, a hope, a relationship).

What would you like to let go of? What’s the hardest thing you have ever chosen to release? What’s the most freeing?

Dedicate a few moments of your day to noticing every possible example of letting go around you. What forms of letting go might you witness in your backyard? In a forest or next to a body of water? In the way your dog or cat or child plays? In your workspace? Your kitchen? The gym? The political realm? The spiritual realm? As you observe more and more examples of letting go, what do you notice about the similarities and differences between them? Do some examples feel easier to witness and hold than others? Why is that?

Let it all tumble and swirl, friends. Somewhere in there is a poem that’s uniquely yours. I keep waiting for two people to write the same poem, and it never happens. Isn’t it amazing? 8+ billion people on this planet, and every single one is having their own unique experience. . . though every single one has felt the sting or the relief or both of letting go.

I look forward to reading your poems. And I hope some of you will join me in an extra bit of poetry play. Read on to learn more!

Poetry Telephone Game, Round 2

If you’ve been here for awhile, then you probably remember our game of poetry telephone, the results of which you can enjoy here. Here’s how it works: I’ll compile a list of everyone who wants to participate. I’ll write a poem and send it to the first person on the list. Their job is to lift a line, phrase, theme, or image from my poem and use it as a prompt to inspire a poem of their own. Ideally, they will lift something obvious enough that a casual reader can identify the link between the two poems. They send that poem to me, and I send it on to the next participant, who then borrows from that poem and crafts a new poem of their own. And so on and so forth until we reach the end of our list, at which point, I’ll publish the entire sequence of poems here (with credit to each poet and a link to their Substack if they have one). If you’d like in, send me a DM or an email, or drop a line in the comments to let me know! I look forward to playing together!