Three a.m. rain

A three a.m. rain

sprinkling

my body warm

from my bed and bare

I step down the back

steps, a splashing

on my shoulders

and then a shiver

crosses my back.

I can only really guess

at the origin,

cool air,

the dark,

the solitude –

so I will not say what was going

on. I only stepped out

into a three a.m. rain.

Newton's Law

Newton had calculated the motions of bodies,

but how human bodies move isn’t entirely clear.

My body had come to rest at the light

and according to Newton’s laws,

pretty much stayed at rest.

The light at 6^th and Mass is long.

The bodies of a boy and girl,

approaching the age of maturity,

came up to the opposite and equal corner.

Their bodies did not come to rest.

The male form was somewhat more stationary,

though spinning on its axis,

arms regularly extending

from their expected positions at his side.

The girl never ceased her motion –

she danced, she spun,

from this side, then to the other.

From my vantage, I could not see

what might have propelled her 360 degree

dipsy doodles. And yet

the pair of bodies nearly always faced each other.

To say, from my corner of the universe,

that these observed motions

and uncounted more

could be mapped or any result

predicted is, I presume,

beyond Mr. Newton’s capability.

And then the light changed.

The Law of Gravity

Everybody makes such a big thing out of gravity.

Well not everybody, really.

But there is this law now –

Newton wrote it –

or maybe that guy that dropped stuff

off the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa.

And I guess we all mostly go around following that law,

most of us, most of the time,

without thinking much about it,

really.

I suppose that they still teach the thing in school.

Well, the day was windy

but my feet were being pulled down to the ground -

one foot after the other.

Kids were getting out of Central

and then I saw it

high up in the air,

I mean, way up high in the air,

a piece,

well it looked like a piece

of newspaper,

a whole piece, really –

drifting across the sky

making little dipsy doodles.

A kid ran under it like it was a kite

and then it blew over the street

and got caught in a tree.

It – that piece of newspaper –

didn’t defy the law of gravity, exactly –

it skirted it,

evaded it, temporarily,

aided and abetted by the wind,

of course.

I took a little running jump,

really not much more than a little leap –

the wind caught at my arms.

I didn’t get away with it.

Next time –

maybe I’ll lose a little weight,

run a little faster.

Maybe I could beat this law yet

when nobody’s looking.

Just gotta find the loophole.

Somebody’s gotta figure out there’s more to life

than this stupid old law of gravity.

Might as well be me.

That piece of newspaper almost got away.