for Margie

I am not the woman whose breath lurches
as he walks to the boulder's edge and peers
down. You call him, he pretends not to hear
as you wait like an angel whose voice is
inaudible to mortal ears. You call
again, and I remember when he was
a child, I wept at nightmares of his loss.
Fear distant as the sources of these falls.
Kayaks bob below, regrouping for new
rapids, and I, a mother who has lost
this child to manhood, see how each must test
the bond of love. Soon, Margie, you will know
how sure his footing is, how your sweet voice
holds him a moment longer on that precipice.

How cautious my life has been, as if
the choices I made could save me.
How I trusted the bond between
the green world and our hunger. As if 
the earth existed only to feed us,
its waters a blessing we deserved.

Now on the first warm day of winter,
risk is the air I breathe.
The cedars, the dogwoods and magnolias 
spiked with buds, the racing clouds, 
become a scrim I can almost see though 
to a future I could believe.

If it came to that, one student said, I’d take
a handful of pills and go to sleep.
Most of the others nod. I doubt 
they would. I doubt they know
how much they want to live.

A hand opens to offer a potato.
Another closes on a crust of bread.
Not in some devastated future,
but now, every day. I stare 
at my palm. I stare at my fist.

Like riding in a hot air balloon as the flame 
burns dim and you descend from that height
where you could see the world below
like a diorama. Past soaring hawk, through trees,
a slow-motion fall that returns you to perspective,
the weight of everything beside your puny angst
or relief. Or the shock of the door sill you didn’t
see, the floor rushing up to you, slam
of your body against nothing so soft as flesh.
The bungee jump when you choose to leap,
trusting the cord will hold, and upside down
you plant your feet on sky and feel blood
rushing to your head. Or not even a fall,
more the dreamlike spin of car on black ice.
Letting go of the wheel, landing where you will. 
Or driving across a bridge, that sudden change
in the road hum so like the shift
you feel between you and your lover, 
proof you’re no longer on solid ground,
but suspended over air and rushing waters,
a chasm so deep you can’t see where it ends.