I was teaching my little sister how to fly when she broke her arm. @3I@1 did. I lay back in the snow and put my galoshes against her skinny butt and pushed her into the sky. Over and over upward into the falling, and the fallen caught her, and her laughter spilled. We got it wrong one time and that was it. I said, "Now, now." My mother's white station wagon disappeared into the snow on its way to the white hospital, and the volume turned up. Right now a spring snow falls and sublimes. The snowline retreats upward like a rising hem of sky. The snow is disappearing toward me. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...WHEN I RISE UP by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: JACOB GODBEY by EDGAR LEE MASTERS A POEM FOR MAX NORDAU by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON CLARK STREET BRIDGE by CARL SANDBURG MY MOTHER LEFT ME by KAREN SWENSON |