Today is a day for eating the poisonous mushrooms.
A day for climbing the pole and finding out how high the voltage is.
For flying above the storm and stepping out onto the clouds,
For standing at Zion’s edge and answering vertigo’s call.

This is the world?
Two years strapped in a padded cell.
Glimpses of trees but never the sky.
Believing it a punishment
For escaping the blood-pulsing waters.

Today is a day for ignoring the painted lines on the road.
A day for standing in the riptide and measuring flow against resistance.
For limbs twining in mistakes that will last a lifetime,
For sweeping away by undertows, by passions, by Deep Blue Sea martinis.

This is the sun?
Seen through the darkness.
Felt through the unguent.
A temptress in heat,
Each loving caress a flirtation with death.

Today is a day for another open outcry.
A day for swarming in the pit and wrestling Rolex a Rolex.
For buying low and selling high,
For forgetting the commonplace sea roiling in silence beyond triple-paned windows.

This is the wind?
Beneath the zephyr hides the gale.
So swaddle the legs, swaddle the arms, swaddle the head.
Never to fall, never to break,
Never to fly.

Today is a day for listening to the ticking clock.
A day for medication and meals and the mewling of the fallen in the hallways.
For ripping out the IVs,
For tottering down the sidewalk and stepping in front of a car.

The genesis of this poem (a genre I don’t feel especially comfortable with and don’t dip into very often) was the sight of a fairy ring in the field. I had an idle, quickly dismissed fancy of picking and eating them in a kind of fungal Russian roulette that led me to cataloging other moments of fatal allure, and in turn to how we as individuals and a society respond to risk and its avoidance, and how that response broadens or shrinks our horizons.