On the Island of Sark
You, gorse: I slow my steps
around the thorns you bare to take
the blood of the unaware.
You put forth your yellow blooms
next to a footbridge strung
between two cliffs — a dizzying drop.
People arrive on the ferry. Others depart.
What’s peril for us is easy for you:
you thrive in a gale-force wind;
you can’t be shipwrecked or drowned.
You scrawl your name in places
only the gulls know how to patrol.
Sure as a god of your right to exist,
you watch the daylong changes in the tide.
* * * * *
October 8th
He left a letter for family and friends
in his apartment, on his desk,
and climbed out of the window toward
his terrible pact with gravity.
Which must be why I dreamt
I saw my husband about to do the same.
I shouted Stop! and he stopped
though he was weeping: he wanted to go.
My cry woke both of us,
my husband’s arm touching mine.
The letter my friend left
said we couldn’t have held him back.