the symphony was playing the Botanical Garden—
Berlioz, I think—when gravity called it a day.
The sky, so close, was the first to shuffle
into space. Elder couples, clutching blankets
and absurd picnic baskets, tumbled beneath us—
taut smiles on their faces. Tomorrow—Earth,
a centrifuge—more deeply rooted things would
break and follow—migrating monuments.
But prone and linked in newly weightless grass
we’d risen first—resembling the turning bud
of a skydiving rose. Tympani and cello rested;
the bassoonist, squinting, looked up, still sipping
her double reed; and though you would bring
stemware and wine, I’d leave the modest ring behind.
Allen M. Weber resides in Hampton, Virginia with his wife and their three sons. The winner of the Virginia Poetry Society’s 2011 Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Prize, his poems have twice appeared in A Prairie Home Companion’s First Person Series, as well as in numerous journals and anthologies—most recently in Loch Raven Review, The Quotable, Naugatuck River Review, and The Burning of the Leaves from The Poet’s Domain.
