to be wrong again, foiled again.

Straightening myself out,

and by my sobering reunion with the earth—

by the consequences of gravity

but Wile E. Coyote, somehow surprised

drifting to cloud nine

I was not a hot air balloon

and probably feelings.

and fluids and upper lip hair

that other human beings have mass

but the abrupt realization

most was not elation or desire

on a couch, what struck me

The first time I ever kissed a girl

climbed into his truck and went home.

and his hearing aids and his raincoat

We talked and ate potato chips and then Wendell

he'd ascended by "embarrassing" himself.

climbing down from a pedestal

to a room of us gibbering fanboys,

the old man did was explain his humanity

When I met Wendell Berry, the first thing

always the divine and the abstract

born in a shitty stable: always,

like the time that journalist

like beautiful women farting in stairwells,

like Lance Armstrong getting caught,

Coming down, coming down,

Did it hurt?

—when you fell from heaven?

It looks like it hurt. You look worse

for wear, honey, to be frank,

and you know I am.

Most humans wouldn't survive

a fall from that height.

Yet you're here

and you seem to be alive.





Look, we both know by now

you're as prone as any human

to be full of crap,

to extrude crap,

to disappoint me—but

there is this:

While I worshiped you before

as the goddess of a concept,

here on the ground

your moles are angelic

and your scars are divine.