So-and-So Descending from the Bridge

It is so-and-so and not the dusty world

who drops.

It is their mother and not the dusty world

who drops them.

Why I imagine her so often

empty-handed

as houseboats’ distant lights

rise and fall on the far ripples—

I do not know.

I know that darkness.

Have stood on that bridge

in the space between the streetlights

dizzy with looking down.

Maybe some darks are deep enough to swallow

what we want them to.

But you can’t have two worlds in your hands

and choose emptiness.

I think that she will never sleep as I sleep,

I who have no so-and-so to throw

or mourn or to let go.

But in that once—with no more

mine, mine, this little so, and that one—

she is what

out-nights me.

So close. So-called

crazy little mother who does not jump.