Acrophobia at Mile Marker 89

The seven mile bridge rises,
unnecesarily high, water out to Havana
on one side, Biloxi on the other.

The road is four cars wide.
Jersey barriers at the edge
(the slighest touch would tip them).

A heart is a ferris wheel that’s seizing
at the very top.
No way down. No way out.

Above, the paranoid sky
below, bipolar sea,
waiting in its sleek green
hide to catch you

and falling is inevitable.

Dust of spinning wheels
makes coral the clouds,
the bridge is

a white crumbling arc
hanging. Broken

columns sink in submarine clay.
Mind crashes and tumbles.

Someone says
Don’t close your eyes.

Hands clamped to the wheel,
wait to come down in Marathon.

(Poem, later)

It was as if the bank teller could not see me
neither could the two girls speaking
Spanish at the information desk.
I was invisible to the hairdresser
except for my hair. In the mirror
I saw the manicurist, but she didn’t look
up from her client’s cuticles
and the bald man in the gallery
talking on a cellphone to a creditor
only saw my money.

In the over-heated parking lot
Camrys and Cadillacs ignored me
sinking their tires into the tarmac
so did the scarlet striped with yellow
leaves of the croton bushes
and the curbside shopping carts.
If the ospreys on their nest
on the light pole had stopped mating
for a minute they might have seen me.
It was as if I had vanished into
the earth when it was not watching:
in reality, too,
the earth was not watching me.

Both hearts broke

She stood at the top of the stairs
clutching the newel-post, knees sagging.
Her moan brought me running: just then
Dad came in the front door past
the foot of the stairs carrying
groceries. She stretched out her arms
past me, to him, weeping. He looked up
for a moment then carried on to the kitchen
eyes down muttering “Got to put things away”.

When I reached up to her, she pushed me away
with the vehement weakness of an invalid,
saying “It was him I wanted”.

Figure of St. Francis in Bronze

He stands on a plinth of broken marble
his hands held outwards,
cupping an intangible gift.
Thin streams trickle from the moss
under his feet into a fountain basin,
his generosity overflows into a gutter
from which animals can drink –
like the brindled dog that drank from your hands
filled with water from a city fountain
that sultry night of chattering starlings
when I first knew your touch
and grateful, shivering,
took what is more important than water
gained strength to return love
like a spring unstopped,
a flow, soaking,
swelling seed and bud
into mortal grass and flowers.