Bet your feet burned
when you landed.
That’s for sure.
Only child playing with your only self.
First the chicken shed
in the corrugated Laredo heat.
Then the roof of the big
house when mama and the aunts
were all asleep.
And years later,
off a plane on some fool dare
you couldn’t back out of.
So the story goes.
How your heart opened like silk.
The crooked spin of horizon.
That awful slant of sky.
And finally, the ripcord
and the yank
back to earth.
Broke an ankle. Bone
split into a thousand colors.
Swell story to tell and tell again
at a San Antonio ice house.
But what I want to know is this.
In that dizzy moment
did your peepee dangle
like a ripcord,
or is it true all men
have hard-ons
when they fall to earth?
And if so,
what is the good
of being close to heaven
if our souls have business with the angels
but our peepees
so much to do with earth.