I was climbing up the ladder

Climbing, Climbing, Climbing

And it was as if someone pulled one of the middle ladder rings

Out from my struggling, shaking right foot.

I fell.

I fell hard.

 

Crashed to the bottom of the slop bucket back to where I started

Perhaps even in a rawer place than I started.

I didn’t go below where I was.

Perhaps I even went to the more enlightened place.

 

The enlightened place in the deep dark bucket of scum

Where there is just enough sunlight for mold to grow and other lovely things to cling to.

And I looked up and realized, perhaps I didn’t fall at all.

Perhaps the ladder I had been climbing wasn’t the right ladder at all.

 

Yes, surely I had gone backwards

But what if backwards was the right way.

For you can never quite change paths without

Going back a little ways that you came.

 

And perhaps even going farther beyond where you started

Getting your footing and finding grounding

Takes going past the start of the soil and into the mush of the ground below.

Perhaps falling and falling was just the right place to go.