To the Young Man on the Bridge

The newspaper caption read: “Two officers talk to a young man, name withheld, as he stands on a bridge above the Merrimack River, distraught over learning that his mother is terminally ill.”

When I first saw you

I could glance up from your image in the paper

and out her kitchen doorway watch

my mother trim her artemisia,

scraps of silver trailing

her green wheelbarrow.

And I imagined yes,

if mine were dying,

I would be on the abutment too,

about to release the cable

ignoring those attempting rescue;

imagined your rock-weight drop

pierce Merrimack gray

driving you through layers of silt and barge wake

till your heart burst

its knot of color

oiled into molecular black.

And now that, years later, I have lost mine,

also to disease, I see your face again

transfixed in white and black,

a pale sphere caught

in the newspaper’s grainy net.

But now I would coax you back

from the railing to tell you:

no matter the number of months that have passed,

what whole rounded year has slipped

a marble from my pocket,

there is a moment of breaking

the surface of whatever hour

and plunging past the floating glass

of doorknobs turned in pain

light shafts driven

further into the enamel

of an incandescent pedal Singer

rimmed in chrome and folds of cloth

whose scent can still drown me

in green oblivion. Floating too

an azure button, despair complete

in its perfect disc, terra cotta saucer

lifted by her hand

with a border of fine red leaves

each holding its breath for all of us,

holding our grief.

I would say to you:

that impossible weight

will drop you every day

and arrows of color pierce

your body clear through, the river

for which you might stay.

Source: Poetry (February 2011)

To The Young Man on the Bridge