Learning to Fly, By NICHOLAS CAMPBELL

Sometimes you have to go

far out on a limb for the fruit.

You’re afraid, maybe, but then

you love the world so much

you’re willing to fall.

Once I reached that limb.

High over a yard, up where

I’d never gone. I wouldn’t listen.

When someone said, “Come down,”

I said it was for love.

“You’d better hold on,” they said,

but I didn’t hear a thing,

not even when she said, “I don’t love you,”

I climbed out where love said,

“Do it for me,” until I was flying.

From “Dandelion Clocks” (Garden Street Press: $7.95; 44 pp.).

Campbell lives in San Luis Obispo, where he teaches Creative Writing at the California Men’s Colony for Artsreach . This is his first collection of poetry. 1993 by Nicholas Campbell. Reprinted by permission.