Humbled by a Fall

I've never been much of a poet. But occasionally I turn to verse in attempt to express the inexpressible. What follows was born out of a lot of pain...most directly the pain from an actual fall I took on Oct. 7 of this fall, resulting in a shattered ankle socket and a broken fibula...indirectly the pain that followed from surgery, 8 weeks in three different casts, crutches on icy stairs, and, of course, the pain $$$ of being without health insurance through it all...
    Less directly still, this poem grows out of two years of falling...falling out of a marriage and family, falling out of a church, falling out of the kind of person I thought I was but really wasn't....just falling. But from all the falling comes a deeply forged humility, a humility that instructs...a humility that undresses only to redress in much finer robes. Humbled by all these falls, I can never be the same...and I trust that, in the end, that will be a good thing. I offer my fall to you in these words with all humility...

Humbled by a fall

    I

  Took

I cast my vision high

From broken pose, my back a’ground

 The stars no longer

    nigh

Humbled by a fall

    I

   Took

 Things once in feigned control

  Spun out

    Away

      And gone

Disdaining Arrogance’ hold

Humbled by a fall

   I

   Took

I wondered,

   Gaped

     And bled

The bastard child

     of Certainty

       now out

     Behind the shed

Humbled by a fall

    I

     Took

A silence

    settles

       in…

Where once

   my words

More harm than good

    In creedal cradle

        sinned


Peace,
Toby