Escape Velocity

Run fast enough and the world falls away. A lost
thought in between dreams and alarms turned to snooze.
A San Andreas fault in reality, but

I've watched the sands of my life falling through an hourglass
then turn back, a gravity and plate tectonic miracle.
The push and pull of taking action and receiving
no reaction; the land does not fade at the horizon
of each moment. I breathe and continue to exist.

So I'm rushing through the atmosphere, letting
the hourglass fall, forgetting time
and space. Gravity won't get my messages; maybe
I never called at all, never wrote a jot. Leave earth
to itself and its quaking tensions; was it a 2.1, an 8?
I'll never know, I'm in outer space.

Built a rocket and a shuttle. Used words and dreams and meta-
phors to fit the moldings, to mold a hinge. A door
into possibility is no door at all. Run fast enough
and the Earth falls away, her blue and green eye
sparkling in the black. The moon a mote of sand.

But it's not enough. Run fast enough and it's not
the correct application of pressure to the cornea, not
the right electric signal to the myocardium. Push
and pull, but the gravitational field of self
won't bend. I am alone in my house on a saturday morning,
listening to my heart beat. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, and again.

Run fast enough, but I just got out of bed. I walk
into the kitchen, hold the hourglass; walk into the study, spin
the globe to find a future. Australia seems nice enough. But
my mind walks ahead, into the moment in the shower where
I cry because I'm missing. I turn my head to hear the sound.

The time it takes to leave the house and find myself again
is no velocity, but the speed of the sound
that rises over the songs of birds in the trees outside. If
I listen hard enough, the world falls away.