Leap

A. E. Stallings
Fear of Happiness
--
Looking back, it's something I've always had:
As a kid, it was a glass-floored elevator
I crouched at the bottom of, my eyes squinched tight,
Or staircase whose gaps I was afraid I'd slip through,
Though someone always said I'd be all right -
Just don't look down or See, it's not so bad
(The nothing rising underfoot). Then later
The high-dive at the pool, the tree-house perch,
Ferris wheels, balconies, cliffs, a penthouse view,
The merest thought of airplanes. You can call
It a fear of heights, a horror of the deep;
But it isn't the unfathomable fall
That makes me giddy, makes my stomach lurch,
It's that the ledge itself invents the leap.

Yves Klein - Leap into the Void (photograph) 1960
[I've also seen this piece titled as, Jump into the Void: The Painter of Space Launches Himself as seen in the newspaper below]

Yves Klein - Single Day Newspaper, November 27, 1960

The following three photographs were taken by Harry Shunk for the above photo-montage and newspaper insert.

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Sean Landers - Sean Leaps into the Void via Harry Shunk's Famous Photograph of Yves Klein, it is a Conceptual Art Act and Not for Sale so Please Don't Sue Me (collage) 2008

Ciprian Mureşan - Leap Into the Void, After 3 Seconds, 2004