When you stand on the ledge
six stories above the street,
you are perhaps lost, but
there is not a lot a map can tell you.
There is back in the window,
and there is down.
What is it that keeps you
from jumping.
You wouldn’t even need to jump.
Just trip. Lean. Step. Or if you sneeze,
it could be considered an accident.
Somehow easier that way to imagine it,
but how to explain the fact that you
climbed through the pane
out onto the railingless edge.
Someone would have to clean up
the splatter. That thought
is enough to hold you here,
back against the brick.
It’s not that you want to die.
Below, the cars crisscross and merge.
But how to go on living.
Beneath you the ravens weave.
Poet Jimi Bernath did a marvelous tarot reading for me this weekend using his (blue ribbon winning) deck of cards. I pulled, of the seven cards I pulled, “edgy harmony,” a dark card about doubt with an image of someone on a ledge. Just wanting to assure any of you who take poems literally or assume they are about the author that I am not about to hurl myself out a window. It’s a metaphor in my case.
Great note about the poem. Wouldn’t it be marvelous to write poems with footnotes that are poems too?:)
The ledge is very edgy, but I could see you when the line arrived that said you wouldn’t jump because “someone would have to clean up the splatter.”. In fact, it’s at that point I knew the metaphor couldn’t jump either, housekeeping being its greatest obstacle. “what is it that keeps you from jumping?”. That’s the line that holds it all together, the one that reins in the act and turns it into a contemplation.
Especially after your explaining the inspiration behind, Dedication, I didn’t begin fearing your self-inflicted departure. Rather, I saw you once again dipping your pen into darker ink. But, ahhh… how goosebumpy is the story behind this poem’s inspiration: razor’s edgy harmony.
“It’s not that you want to die./…But how to go on living.” And, also indeed, “you are perhaps lost, but/there is not a lot a map can tell you.”
We’re taught to take risks, yet we’re also told to not leave messes for others to clean up. I think it’s this fear of what we’ll leave in our wake for others to deal with that often keeps us safely at bay, keeps us ensconced between the guardrailed lines.
To step out into the opened, quickening air; the wide world below…
How do we go on living? Take step forward (like Indiana Jones) into the vastness, or take a step back into the certainty of where we come from?
Oh hey, I remember this from Ziggies! Very nice, Rosemerry. A good warm-up to Emily 🙂