swings raze they oiled the swing set and now the chains don't make so many sounds pulling against the frame only the obvious ones the soft creaks that say "i'll hold you as long as you want to be held" so you can raise your legs and lower them and raise them again rocking back and forth kicking into the invisible gases that are everywhere you are until flight doesn't seem so far away 210821 ... ovenbird Is there anything sadder than a silent swing? All motion suspended, its purpose unfulfilled? This one hangs from the branch of a cherry tree while petals fall and fall and fall. My children are too old to feel the allure of flying. The ghost of the new mother I was sits at the picnic table drawing in a sketchbook with grey toned pages. I say, “you’re going to survive this,” but she doesn’t hear me. The swing is still. Alice had a swing set in her backyard. We pumped our legs until the metal frame heaved out of the ground. I never liked the sensation of falling, but this was different, this was arcing, and my body was a spark traversing the gap between to and fro. My hands gripped the exposed chain that kept me anchored, until the creased skin of my palms slipped into the gap between steel links and I came away with a burr of rust protruding from my palm and a drop of blood sliding down my wrist. Even then, the world was apt to bite me if my face appeared too free. Now, as the weather warms, I set up a hammock chair on my upper balcony and it swings me gently in the shade of the maple while dragonflies mate in mid air. We never lose the love of being rocked, do we? Our bodies remember the buoyancy of the sea that formed us and we search for weightlessness every day of our lives upon this earth. Can you remember the sensation? The feeling of ecstatic suspension at the highest point of your body’s curve through air? Were you also, at that brief moment of stasis, always tempted to jump? 260429 what's it to you? who go blather from