SCARED OF HEIGHTS

Scared of Heights
Age 64, Williston, North Carolina, 2008

-- This is one poem, from my autobiographical series of poems, that I posted here at WriteSpike. Go to my Stories section for others. They are in chronological order. --

At Florida springs,
floating in shallows
I was suddenly above
a fifty-foot drop -
I caught my breath
even as I was holding my breath,
hovering in freshwater
clear as air
over the darkness
of a deep underwater cave

years later I would dream
of hanging above a river
at the tip of a crane
when my life choices had
put me out on a limb

like a roughneck steeplejack
walking the bare girders
of a high-rise under construction
I had a skeleton vision:
that digital photography could be like painting:
personal, subjective, expressive

yet my work had been met with ridicule
my essays dismissed as odd
and my vision seen as too heady

I had risked everything
to piece together the two elements
of my divorced family
my father a painter
my mother a photographer

if I could merge them,
I could be whole

now in my dream
at the top of a suspension bridge
I was in the wind
at the end of a crane's arm
with only slippery painted metal
to hold on to

yet there was a stillness
a simple beauty
as the threads of fate
were in control

always scared of heights
instead I felt a sudden freedom

que sera sera