Terminal Velocity

A penny dropped from the top
of the Eiffel Tower could kill
someone. Or so goes a myth.
Which building it departs doesn’t
matter so much as the constant
terminal velocity

in draggy Paris air, a speed
of around 44 km/h—to the top
of the head nonfatal. Constantly,
I’m apologizing for killing
the head-banging fly who can’t
press for clemency. The myth

of sin. The myth
of the bumblebee’s fast-
flutter as unairworthy—it doesn’t
hold any garden water. What’s the top
speed of a low-flying death,
or the undelivered forevers

of every whom and what? Always
the myth
that a kill
happens once. That the velocity
of original thinking tops
a goldfish’s eyeblink attention. Doesn’t

matter? Who doesn’t
long for a forever
fontanelle, a lucent pane above
the brain’s imperious aims? A myth
more delectable than a speeding
sou, an acceptable ending

to a baby-faced tale. Am I a killjoy
for insisting that a particle accelerator doesn’t
manufacture black holes? That the velocity
of logic flirts with "relativistic"? Constantly
I’m plunging into another magical
warren chase, as songbirds on high

are inevitably drawn to sky-scraping selves, killing
sentience in an instant. You know, the myth that
top speed will never taper, never end me.

C. John Graham’s poetry has appeared in The Laurel Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Blue Mesa Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Taos Journal of Poetry and Art, and the anthology Off Channel, among other publications. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and before retirement, worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory’s particle accelerator facility for 22 years. He now serves as a search and rescue pilot and continues a lifelong spiritual inquiry. Louise Glück once expressed admiration for the “originality and strangeness” of Graham’s work.