ROPE SWINGING

My father says that I am young,
That I have no sense of my own mortality.
He is wrong.

As a kid I was bad
At rope-swinging. I could not let go
With faith that the red-clay bank
Across the creek would catch me, or that
The soft water of the lake would break my fall.
I tended to hang on past the last second
When the rope had passed apogee
And was slackening back towards the earth
In a graceless arc. When I did let go
(If I did let go)
I flogged the air helplessly
And landed in a heap of arms and legs and torso
Wherever gravity sent me.

I imagine I will die a violent death.
By a car crash or a fall from a high place,
Or perhaps in a mugging on the night-lit streets
Of a big city.
If I go by illness, or injury, or infirmity
It will not be pretty.
I will go kicking and screaming.
I do not have the instincts for letting go
At the last possible second.