When gravity yawned

There are times

when we fire rifles

into the air.

They are our mouths

as barrels wide open

with bullets for thoughts,

launched as bangs

that head off wailing.

And when they reach

their maximum distance

from earth,

several units of ear shot away,

ever so slowly,

they all phase.

Almost in unison,

relative to their firing cadence,

blam-blam-blam-blam-blam,

they then turn.

Only to face earth

and see gravity yawn,

together with this

cloud-captioned remark.

Something to the effect of

“hey little buddies,

you made quite the loud effort

to get to here!

zoom zoom zoom . . .

you know?

Too bad but . . .

you all have got to fall back

. . . lads”.

And so for that

somewhat prolonged

timeless moment,

when our forward thrust

had been neutralized

by gravity’s intention and response,

there is this special

though short span of “other than”

(a composition

of weightless transition

if for nothing else)

and then . . .

that look back . . .

where gravity yawned,

maybe bored

with blam-blam and zoom-zoom

and the bigger than

boom . . . boom . . .

so much of it these days.

But . . . none the less,

this gravity

further acknowledged

our speedy little efforts

with a continuance of attention

as if a kind of applause,

often louder

than one human hand clapping,

until then,

as if seized by descent.

The applause became drowned out,

replaced with the hurry

of our aerodynamic surfaces,

excusing themselves

in accelerating passage.

So much so,

that it became the easy prerogative

to deftly turn completely

the other way

and face

the oncoming magnification directly.

well . . . in the short span

of a bullet’s free flight life,

this is an unheard of.

It may not have been

as fast as rumored we can go,

but this . . . buoyant pause,

this seemed like “the forever dream”

as bullets who talk story

have described.

“ I am in this dream

where I am flying

not like at a target

say . . . a person as such

but . . . really flying.

And this flight

goes on and on,

way past

one bullet’s normal attention span.

It is like . . .

I am still flying to think it now!

It is almost like

I am in slow motion

. . . still flying,

but I may have been sinking

because my head was down

rather than level.

But the rush was still face full,

so I was a little confused

yet filled with delight.

It was a journey

beyond disintegration.

The scale of things

was magnificent.

I felt a bold trajectory!

And even when I hit,

it was not smack daddy splat.

It was . . . almost gentle,

no doubt retaining

my travel shape.

Oh I may be down now but . . .

wow . . .

what an outing we were!

I hope that as the rat-ta-ta-ta,

we’ll get back together again

and compare.

I really want to know.

I want to know

if any of the other bullets

saw what I saw,

and felt what I felt,

when gravity yawned . . .