Toby Widdicombe

IN MIDAIR

They say one of them jumped from table to head twice.
Table—Head.
Table—Head.

I don’t wonder why:
Senseless acts are just that.

No. I wonder what it would feel like under your feet.
Would it feel no different from bouldering?
Is a head jumped on squishy as a PB & J
Hard as a dried-out granola bar
Or somewhere in between?
An over-toasted crumpet.
There’s no way to know without doing it.

And I wonder why he didn’t fight back.
Crying out and flailing with the tide ebbing
Seeing boot soles crashing from above
That’s not challenge; that’s acquiescence.
Did he feel like a spectator at his own death?
Did he welcome an end to a life
Braided by failures, twisted by mistakes, shot through with vicious and
neglectful acts?

Most of all I wonder what it felt like
In mid-jump.
In midair.
Would there be comfort in knowing gravity
Would force the act to its conclusion?
And if regret bubbled to the surface
Like so much gas from a stagnant pond
How would you feel for that second suspended
Before the inevitable fall?
If he or they or you could take it back,
Would you?
Or would anyone joy to see the event to its conclusion:
A unique sensation next to which death
Any death(by road, in bed, at night, on cross)
Sputters into silence, dwindles into distance, touches only lightly.

Of course, they have to write about the crime.
Of course, I wonder at it.
But I know senseless acts are just that.
So, how is jumping from a table not the same
As giving birth, as dying, as making love, as eating.
These are all and always grotesque.
We accept these. We embrace those. We spurn that.
And I wonder: Why?


Toby's YouTube video reading of "In Midair":



Subscribe and turn on Notifications for Channel 52.


Toby confesses: "Twenty years ago there was a rash of attacks in Anchorage, Alaska against the homeless. This one murder has stayed with me because of its brutality and senselessness. The poem took a couple of unexpected paths: towards what murder feels like for the murderer as well as the victim; and towards what else is grotesque in life."

TOBY WIDDICOMBE was educated in England and the United States. He has been a professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage for nearly thirty years. He writes poetry, nonfiction, children’s fiction, and academic argument--lots of the last.