Floating

He steps off the bank for the third time today

The rough fibers of the rope cut into his hands

Shaving off little circlets of skin below his fingers

He can barely feel the stinging, as the rope dips him

Low above the water, then the dropped-belly sensation

As he rises to his zenith where, for a breathtaking second

He floats, weightless in midair, just like Wile E. Coyote

When he’s run out past the edge of the cliff and finds

For one horrible, comic second that coyotes and little boys

Can levitate but not for long, and he knows the rope will

Change direction and send him back toward the bank or

Onto the rocks just below the surface of the river’s edge

When he lets go with both hands and legs and drops

Slick and slender and lovely, and although he doesn’t know it

He is the most beautiful boy in the world in that second

And if you told him the truth of this he would snort and hope

Nobody else had heard you say something so girly and dumb

But at his core, this floating boy will always be inside

The man he will become and everything in his life

That he finds to be important will resurrect in him

How he feels at the river this hot, gorgeous summer