As soon as I start to pay strict attention
to that white lily diving upward
like a ballerina, naturally
I look up and there’s a man on the trestle,
studying the murky water.
I have no way to gauge
the exact depth of his misery. Maybe
he’s thinking of jumping.
I could be recalling yesterday’s Oprah show
about the man who jumped
and only one guy in a whole crowd
tried to save him,
too late. Though when I see him there,
even in my imagination,
I wonder if it’s my ex-husband, always
on the edge of a cliff, or a trestle,
smoking a Tareyton, thinking he’ll
jump. How no one could save him,
but my brain keeps ledges he can quietly
sit on for a while.
This is what I’m used to: the one thing
like the sweet uplifted arms of the lily,
and then there’s the other. Neither speaks
to the other; there’s not much to say.
They could be dancing the tango,
eyes outward into space,
moving as if the other’s only something to
maneuver with, to keep things going.
But it’s spring, so
let’s say the man on the trestle’s remembering
his daughter’s twelfth birthday,
when she asked him to dance with her
in her new ballerina slippers.
When I said “ballerina” in reference to
the lily, he thought, instead,
of her skinny beauty, before she took the job
at Burger King and gained the weight
and moved in with her boyfriend,
although these days he feels lighter,
released from her life, a little.
And she’s going on a diet, quitting
smoking. This is what spring is like.
In the grass by the lily, a worm’s
probably opening little breathing tubes
in the earth. The man can
sit up there all day, breathing. He can keep on
looking like a leftover hippie,
pulling down his dirty Dodgers’ cap.
He can keep on, without me.