by Jeff Mock

 

Waking is a sort of falling
As if through water, the slow

Pressure against your body
And against the day itself,

Against tomorrow as tomorrow
Reaches back to you to pull

You into it, and you pull
Yourself along by drawing

The water past you, the water
That is this day that takes

You in and buoys you, you
Who are the lighter

Element, the thing that has
No place to fall.

 

Jeff Mock is the author of Ruthless. His poems appear in American Poetry Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The Georgia Review, New England Review, The North American Review, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. He directs the MFA program at Southern Connecticut State University and lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with his wife, Margot Schilpp, and their daughters, Paula and Leah.