. . . the possession is Infinite & himself Infinite.
—William Blake, There Is No Natural Religion
Witness this woman’s knees locked
in position half out of her parked car,
her fists clenched, her arms stuck
as if mid-jumping jack. She rocks
from the waist up, pitches close
to falling to the hot pavement dotted
with spit-out gum and bits of glass,
her stunned I don’t know, I don’t
know what’s wrong with me
like something I hear through a seashell
then run toward.
I do what I’m told
by the dispatch operator. I hold
her head back and repeat each fact: she’s
thirty-two, no heart attacks, not
diabetic, not in a wreck. She wears her black
hair pulled back and I have no
idea what—maybe dog days, the July
of everything—pinned her to this spot
in the grocery store parking lot
where she cannot unhinge
herself, her arms still skyward
as if reaching for a trapeze
that’s swinging right toward her
even as they strap her
to the padded blue stretcher.
I stand there recalling
the details as if they might
still matter: the ambushed look,
how her throat was sweating
though her forehead was ashen,
in the creases of her armpits,
a few televised-looking
onlookers. How could they know
that I’ve waited half my life
to wave with a hero’s hand,
to hold without knowing it
and repeat without knowing it
everything’s okay until the ambulance
pulls away, the buggies breeze
freely past, and the clouds
well up like hurt feelings above the pine-tops
where the usual seagulls
wheel high then low again, off-course,
confused because the pavement
with yellow and white lines
is not the ocean.