Then the air was perfect. And his descent
to the white earth slowed.
 Falling
became an ability to rest--as

the released breath
believes in life. Further down it snowed,

a confusion of slow novas
which his shoes touched upon, which seemed
as he fell by

to be rising. From every
small college and rural town:
 the clearest, iced blossoms of thought,

but gentle.
 Then the housetops
of friends, who
he thought had been speaking of his arrival,
withdrew, each from another.

He saw that his friends
lived in a solitude they had not ever said aloud.

Strangely he thought this good.

 The world, in fact,
which in these moments he came toward,

seemed casual.
Had he been thinking this all along?

 A life
where he belonged, having lived with himself

always, as a secret friend.

A few may have seen him then. In evidence:
the stopped dots
of children & dogs, sudden weave

 of a car--
acquaintances, circling up
into the adventure they imagined. They saw him drop

through the line breaks
and preciousness of art

down to the lake
which openly awaited him.
 Here the thin
 green ice allowed him in.

Some ran, and were late.
These would
forever imagine tragedy

(endless descent,
his face floating among the reeds,
unrecognized), as those

who imagine the silence of a guest
to be mysterious, or wrong.