Bungee Jump

When he was twenty, he bragged about it.
At forty, he called it the stupid thing he did
for his nineteenth birthday.

By sixty, it became mystical,
something like doves flying
through fog, like rivers
or women.

For decades, he hung over that chasm,
his childhood buddies cheered above,
a river’s hips curved below, a chord
stretching all the way to the bridge,

gasping as if his lungs
have never tasted the icy sting
of oxygen.