we discover that falling in the canyon is our initiation
—Mark Nepo, “The Life After Tears”
I didn’t land. I fell and I fell and I fell.
At first as I plummeted, I feared the landing,
imagining an imminent crash. Then,
I fell through nights and middays. Fell through
kitchen floors and highways. Fell through
birthdays and Saturdays. Fell until the sense
of groundlessness was so familiar it no longer
felt like peril. I don’t know when I stopped falling.
There was no splat. No splash. No crushing of bones.
No sense of arrival. In fact, I am not certain
I am done with my falling. But I do know now
the falling is not something to be feared.
Not that we grow wings. This is not about flying.
It’s about falling. About meeting the gravity
and feeling its force and letting it carry me
in ways I have never before let myself be carried.
Now I know that the canyon of grief is
just another name for living the fullest life.
The reward for the falling is to no longer
expect a reward. The reward of falling is to
learn to not resist the falling. The reward of falling
is to feel how grace falls with us as if holding
our hand, like a teacher, like a friend.
Posts Tagged ‘falling’
After I Fell in the Canyon of Grief
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, canyon, falling, grace, grief, surrender on January 7, 2026| 10 Comments »
Lucky
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling, hiking, luck on July 13, 2025| 2 Comments »
No, I didn’t just fall,
I flew. Stubbed my toe
while walking down
the knobby, steep path,
and I flew, did a somersault,
too, and my hat and glasses
fell off, and I landed, sprawling,
somewhat upside down
on the trail and what
is a human to do
but leap up and be grateful
all those big, heavy stones
are in the path and not
in my pockets, grateful
that bruises will heal,
grateful leaping up
was an option this time.
Not that one plans
to fall, but isn’t it strange
how a mistake can
sometimes make you
feel lucky, not lucky
to fall, but lucky to
be able to move
through the world
at all.
Fearless
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, falling, fear, life, survival on July 3, 2023| 3 Comments »
One day, perhaps, I will be as fearless
as I was last night in my dream—
when I went careening over the high cliff,
and as I entered free fall, I thought,
wow, this is it, you really did it this time—
and as the air rushed past my face
I thought If these are your last few moments,
can you choose to enjoy them?
In every other dream of falling,
I fell into fear, a deep clenching.
But this time my arms unfurled full length,
my legs spread, my eyes widened,
and I gave myself to the falling.
God, I was free.
When I landed face first on a rooftop,
I was, for a time, motionless, bruised,
breathless, and then, sweet miracle,
thrilled by the fall, I walked away,
so much life in every step.
Then I Stood There a Long Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, failure, falling, let x equal x, standing, winter on March 10, 2023| 11 Comments »
Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.
—Mary Oliver, “It Was Early”
There is no lovely way to put this.
It was sleeting. I am not going to tell you
how the gray sky unfolded like a somber rose,
how the misty air softened every dark
and barren thing. It was sleeting.
And slick. And when I fell, it hurt.
A lot. But I got up. I got up.
Skate Skiing at Priest Lake
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling, grief, moving, recovery, skate skiing on January 9, 2022| 9 Comments »
For two hours, I am
more lung than thought,
more legs than loss,
more heart beat
than heart ache,
and so holy alive
as I become rhythm
of push and glide,
push and glide,
pole and swing,
I transform into
a flying thing—
each shift from ski
to sliding ski
a calling on balance
that comes from
the core.
By the time
I ski back to the car,
it’s not that I have forgotten
my loss, it’s just
that every cell in me
now remembers
the dance between
falling and recovery,
falling and recovery—
how it happens
again and again—
how this is the way
we recalibrate—
we fall, we recover,
we move forward.
Ice Skating in Houston in June
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling, falling in love, ice skating, love on June 4, 2021| 2 Comments »
And there, in the center
of summer, in the center
of the city, surrounded
by high rises and highways,
the boy and the girl who have fallen
in love learn to ice skate—
they glide, haltingly, in circles,
barely managing to stay upright,
but there are some things
that sweet determination
can conquer. Look at them,
learning to move in new ways,
holding on to each other to stay up,
practicing trust even as,
all around them, the world
practices how to fall down.
Acceleration
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling, hope, icarus on May 29, 2021| 4 Comments »
Sometimes when I fall long enough,
I stop hoping I will stop falling.
In those moments, when I no longer
wish for the wings of an answer,
or for the solid ground of resolution,
such beautiful surrender
in the dropping through space,
in submitting to the weight
of what it takes to hold a soul.
I wonder if Icarus felt it, too. Perhaps,
if only for a moment, he knew
the rush of air, the thrill of not trying
to inhibit the tumble, the gift of knowing
self as free fall, the skill of giving in,
every prayer coming out as sound of wind.
So Many Ways to Do It Right
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged being right, falling, path, stillness on March 13, 2021| 6 Comments »
This longing to get it right—
to not only find the right path
but to walk it with grace,
without stalling, without stumbling.
But the forest is dark and deep
and the paths are many—
and I fall, and in falling,
I stop.
So this is what it takes
to notice the beauty of being still,
to see how staying in place, too, is a path,
how falling, too, is a grace.
How much easier it is to walk now
when I trust any path I’m on is the right one,
even this one where I fall,
even this one when I don’t move at all.
Fluency
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling, language, love on December 27, 2020| 3 Comments »
Stepping off the edge
I began to learn falling
as I would learn to speak
another tongue—
confused at first,
disoriented,
but now the thrill
as I notice
how the new
airy syntax
and unbound grammar
have changed
everything
about the way I think,
everything
about the way
I love.
New Starting Point
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged confusion, falling, surrender, tree on June 2, 2020| 4 Comments »
I invite you to fall down. Fall down to the earth.
—Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, “Darkness is Asking to Be Loved,” Lion’s Roar
Today, I am fallen tree.
I am deadwood.
Surrender. I am
don’t-try-to-rise.
Today is a day to know
what it is to fall,
to be felled, to stay fallen.
To say nothing.
Today I am grateful
for gravity that insists,
Don’t try. I don’t try.
I lose any certainty
of where my body ends,
where earth begins,
lose myself in dark, loamy scent
of disturbed and open dirt.
There will be a day
to rise, to stand, to grow
new leaves that gather shine,
to share. But today is a day
to lie on the ground
and lean into loss,
say yes to confusion.
to be torn apart, to listen,
to know the only way
to start again is from here.
Grace
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling, fear, good enough, grace on January 25, 2020| Leave a Comment »
After all these years of falling, falling,
terrified of my own weight, terrified
of gravity, after all these years of dropping
through the sky, through all these fears
of not good enough, certain I will crash,
I will die, I find myself now wearing
a great white parachute that appeared
as if I were dreaming, to save me.
After all these years harnessed only to fear,
I land gently, as if on a flat green lawn.
And I’m not just safe, I’m smiling.
I try to reason it logically: Air resistance
with a chute is greater than gravity.
But there is no logic here. How
did the parachute appear? I
didn’t even ask to be saved. Here I am,
good enough, two feet on the ground.
After years and years of falling,
I’m okay. I’m wildly okay.
Bushwhack
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling, hiking, journey, lesson, poem, poetry, road, walking on February 2, 2019| 2 Comments »
I followed the road as if it were a teacher.
It went up, I went up. It turned, I turned.
It was a long time before I relearned
that the road is not the only way to go.
The first day I walked away from the gravel,
I fell. That was the day I learned
staying upright is not what’s most important.
Caught in the Act
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged balance, falling, poem, poetry, wings on August 19, 2015| 4 Comments »
Let’s say you’re carrying a priceless bowl
overflowing with fruits and flowers,
and let’s say you’re balancing it on your head.
And let’s say you’re on a high wire.
And let’s say the wire is above the falls.
And let’s say it’s electrical.
And let’s say it’s about to come unplugged.
Let’s say you’re in the middle.
What is it that inspires you
to do these crazy things?
Regardless, Now’d be the right time to learn
how to use those enormous wings,
those wings you’ve pretended not to have—
that you hid because, who knows why?
We all fall sometime from the high wire act,
but some of us learn to fly.
After Reading the Korean Folktale About Why There are Earthquakes, I Think of Marriage
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged earthquake, falling, Korean folktale, love, marriage, poem, poetry on December 2, 2014| 1 Comment »
It all falls down eventually.
The ivory tower, the concrete tower,
the mountains, the mesas, the happily ever,
the everything we know. Even heaven
begins to sag eventually. First one corner.
One corner is enough to alarm the king.
It all falls down eventually.
“Heaven is sagging!” he shouts
to his servants. “We must keep it
from toppling!” And so he commands,
as kings often do, his workers to make it right.
“Build me a pillar of copper, red,
and place it under the sagging floor
so heaven doesn’t fall.”
My dear, I have been the king.
I have tried to construct
a pillar, a grand one, to hold up any depressions
that slant our love. When we list, I build
the pillar higher. For a time it feels right.
But the earth beneath the red copper pillar
was only made of earth. And it only worked
for a while before the ground gave way
beneath the weight of paradise.
It all falls down eventually.
The king wandered the streets of heaven
in search of the strongest man.
Finding him, he cried, “Heaven is collapsing!”
And he ordered the man to stand on the earth,
feet wide, spine tall. He said, “Hoist
that copper pillar on your shoulder. Now stay.”
My dear, I have wanted to be the strongest man.
I have hoisted and held the pillar until
my bones have buckled, my spine warped.
It all falls down eventually.
After a while, even a strong man’s shoulder
grows tired and sore. After a while, even
the strongest man must shift a burden
to his other shoulder. And though he is careful,
though he wills himself to be solid,
the earth quakes, it trembles as he shifts
his weight. And though heaven stays up,
things on earth fall down.
My love, I am not the strongest man.
I have fallen down and brought heaven
down with me. My love, I have dropped the pillar.
I have seen the crash of paradise and felt
the weight of its rubble. I have seen the vines
grow up green amidst the wreckage.
We have walked these ruins together.
It is easier here to laugh. I’m no longer
frightened of falling. Heaven is no place for us.
Here, are your shoulders tired, too? Come.
Let’s lie down in this grass. Feel how the earth
reaches up to meet us. Oh love, what is this
beauty, I am trembling.
Before Work
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling, mother, physics, poem, poetry, son on March 24, 2014| 2 Comments »
So Mom, he says, If you’re ever falling on a platform
toward the ocean, let’s say from the edge of the space, and
you’re falling so fast that the impact would kill you, here is what you do.
We are eating buttered bagels with jam. The small silver table
reflects the long slant rays of early morning sun. I take a bite,
and look at him with eyes that say, Go on.
Well just before you hit the waves, he says, you jump.
You have to get off the platform, because once in the air
you become your own force. And it still might hurt, but you’ll live.
I do not recall enough of physics to be certain he is right.
But it sounds as if it could be true. And I stare at him
until he stares back, his mouth rimmed with poppy seeds.
It’s possible that it could work on land, too, he says,
though chances are it would hurt a lot more.
I wonder when he learned to say things such as, “Chances are.”
I do not tell him I have fallen, fallen from the edge of known.
I do not tell him there was no platform for me to jump from.
I do not tell him I was scared.
I say, That is very good advice. I’ll remember that next time
I fall. And we eat our bagels in the morning sun. And I fall in love
with the boy, with forces I don’t understand, and with the feeling of falling
right through the sunlit room, right through the breakfast chair,
right through the platform that might someday save me.
The dust sparkles like surf in the air.
Because That’s What We Do
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aloneness, compassion, falling, poem, poetry on January 25, 2014| 1 Comment »
I remember how,
as I was free falling,
for weeks I fell,
so many hands reached
out for me as if
to save me from falling.
I extended my own hand,
not to catch hold, but
to wave as I passed.
I knew there was nothing
anyone could do
to stop the plummeting.
There was
no sorrow in this.
I was falling. That was
the way it was.
And then one day
I was not.
I don’t remember
how it stopped. There
was no violence.
No pain. No crash.
No blood. No bruises.
No scars.
Even knowing this,
as I watch you fall,
my hands can’t
stop themselves
from reaching.
Thirty Years Later
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, falling, family, father, love, poem on March 31, 2013| 2 Comments »
By the ankles
he would hold me
at the end
of the long, white pier.
“Don’t fall in,”
he would say.
“Whatever you do,
don’t fall in.”
His enormous,
generous hands
gripped my small legs
and he’d dangle
my sun-bleached hair
toward the water
till it dipped in the lake
and began to drip.
“Don’t fall in,”
I’d be squealing by now,
not out of any real fear,
more with the thrill
of being held at the edge,
knowing there was not
a thing I could do to save
myself, nor was there any
real danger. God,
he was strong.
And big. And so full
of love. And play.
“Don’t fall in,”
he would say,
the release me.
The water always colder
than I’d want it to be.
I’d come up all splutter
and dripping, somewhere
between happiness
and surrender. I’d clamber
back up the old wooden ladder
and beg him to do it again.
What did I know then of falling?
It is not the falling that hurts.
It’s the landing that can be so awful.
Tear of skin, fracture of bone,
terrible thud of flesh. He taught me
the joy of falling when it ended
in a splash.
I come to tell Dad I’m falling.
This time it is by my own hand.
I am falling even now
at the table where we sit.
Falling through the water glass.
Falling through the words as they fall
from my lips. Falling through lies I told.
He offers me his thick fingers, his enormous palm,
still so much bigger than my own.
He reaches for me. I am falling.
He would catch me if he could.
What do I know of falling?
I fall right through his hands.
Watching Rachel Balance Rocks beside the River
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged balance, falling, poem, poetry, poetry friends, Rachel Kellum, rocks on June 1, 2012| 5 Comments »
She does not choose
the flat rocks, the ones
that might stack like bricks.
She chooses a slender volume
of gray sandstone, rounded
to a point on one side,
and balances it on the beach,
point side up. The next rock
is also a misshapen thing … not
at all a likely candidate
for balancing, much less on its edge,
but with gentle fingers
Rachel sets it on its knobbed
end and moves her hands away.
It is not at all straightforward.
What balances, balances
through patience and some odd grace,
and Rachel adds an egg shaped oval
rock into the notch at the top and backs away.
The pile miraculously stands.
Though I try to turn my mind
toward metaphors for love,
there is nothing to get here
except the pleasure of sitting
beside the river, the hatch
catching in our hair, stacking rocks
one on top of the other, one unlikely
sweet spot at a time before they all
fall down.
Not From Grace, But With It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, dream, falling, grace, poems, poetry on April 20, 2012| 3 Comments »
There is the moment
just before you fall
when you know
there is nothing left
to do except
to fall, to fall,
to fall and say yes
to the falling, to fall
and feel yourself
as you fall, how the stomach
rises where the throat
has been, it’s silent,
then—and it’s fast,
you think, so fast,
you are falling and not
a damn thing to be done
except to fall, to notice
the air rush over the skin,
yes nothing to do but
to fall, to keep falling,
to fall.
Or Is It Learning to be More Than That?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answer, certainty, falling, path, poem, question, silence, uncertainty, unlearning on February 1, 2012| 9 Comments »
I curl the question mark of my body
into the silence around us. There is silence
inside of us, too, a pure silence that pools
and spills and overflows making it easier now to not know,
to not even guess what comes next,
and after years of wanting answers and trying
to make the world fit into an equation or an outline
or a calendar square or a rhyme scheme, I am
more easy now with falling into silence, with falling and
not even believing in wings, falling past
the hands reaching out to rescue me as if
falling is a terrible thing. But even falling
is a form of knowing, just a new metaphor,
a new word for path. And even a question mark
knows where it curves, where it is line, where it
breaks, where it becomes a point, one small point
amongst many small points. I am learning,
unlearning, to be less than that.