Everything falls at the same speed

by Colin Gibson
(follow him on Twitter)

As clouds covered the sky, hiding the sun from warming the street, four boys ran down a footpath chasing someone’s leather ball. Rolling downhill, this ball followed Newton’s declaration upon gravity, the potential of kinetic, bouncing along and down, and down, falling ever at Isaac’s word.

Some way down the hill an old man stepped outdoors from a hardware store as the ball rolled past his feet, followed hotly by four chasing boys. Run! yelled the old man, run! he screamed, cheering them on in their fight against Newton’s gravity. But futile was their trying, unheeding of effort, all objects fall at the same speed.

Icarus from the sky, an apple from a tree, angels from Heaven, or the beloved from grace; everything falls at the same speed. The ball fell, and fell, and fell again, chased by the four boys. Stars from the sky, a rocket from space, the brown haired-boy as car-shattered limbs fall from a bruised trajectory across the afternoon traffic’s intersection.

Earth’s surface cooled where clouds hid the sunshine, a darker sky than the day before. A leather ball continued to roll somewhere in that town, heedless of efforts to defy gravity. Tears from a mother’s face fell upon freshly dug ground.

Everything falls at the same speed.