Thank you for keeping my feet on the ground.
I’ve almost blown away in wind-spinning storms,
in hurricanes of doubts and wishes,
but you’ve been there like a god,
omniscient, omnipotent – nothing seems
to unmoor you. Is it because you travel
at the speed of light? I didn’t even know
you travelled at all. Maybe you’ve learned
disguises, having been around so long, shaping
stars and planets, and when I lose track
of invisible forces, there you are to whisper
how mysterious this world is.
Like the moon! How it hugs the ocean closer
onto the shore and releases it over and over,
how without you, that nightly spectacle
would have floated away, a kid’s birthday
balloon disappearing like a fading dream.
You are the ultimate wave of attraction, so I come
to you humbly, asking how we learn
to lean in, to feel the pull of recognition
between earthworm & crepe myrtle & copepod
& ourselves, because the situation, indeed,
is grave, and I assure you, dear Gravity,
I don’t invoke your name lightly.
—
Joanne Durham is the author of To Drink from a Wider Bowl, winner of the Sinclair Poetry Prize (Evening Street Press, 2022) and the chapbook, On Shifting Shoals (Kelsay Books, 2023). Her poetry appears in Poetry South, Banyan Review, Feral, Vox Populi and numerous other journals and anthologies. She lives on the North Carolina, USA coast, with the ocean as her backyard and muse. Visit her at https://www.joannedurham.com.
