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Twenty-five feet to
the ceiling
of the gym
junior high school, P.S. 232
and in one corner
two ropes hung
--rough, hand-burning, dark-yellow ropes,
the test of our guts
(supposedly)
and the teachers told
us
Climb all the way up
or you don’t graduate -
you stay back until
you can do it.
I wasn’t the only one
who believed them.
But no one taught us.
Not really.
Sure, they showed
us once:
Pull with your
arms like this and
wrap the rope
around your leg, get a grip
between your
sneakers.
whenever I could
get up the nerve
when no one
was looking
I tried to practice -
never made it more
than ten feet before my
12-year-old skinny-boy
arms
failed
and I hung there,
legs thrashing.
But on the appointed day
in June
adrenalin pounding, fear
doing its powerful work,
I heard my name called and
like a hunted animal
I leaped forward and before
I could register what was
happening
the boy who inhabited me
went up that rope
arms alone pulling him
the entire way, which
I had thought
impossible, far beyond my strength.
And then
that strange moment at the top,
looking down
twenty-five feet,
elated and dazed, my altered state
just beginning to recede,
twenty-five feet to fall, or slide,
or descend in triumph;
such a long way down
and I was even more afraid
--all those years in front of me
about to unfold, and me
not knowing any better how
to return to earth
than I’d known how to ascend.
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