Free falling

``Oh, are you the sky diver we're expecting today? The captain from the parachute corps?'' The head of the Speakers Committee asks as I lug my bag of poems to the podium. Parachutist? Perhaps . . . Though only a fool would jump unless his plane were on fire, yes, I leap from altitudes I hadn't thought to reach, and into terrain unmapped or known, and so far my parachute has blossomed in time.

Elisavietta Ritchie