Under Bridges

Under Bridges

I longed for her because she had turned away

toward what did not include me.

I longed for her

though I understood what important work she had,

thoughI knew she was “very busy”—

                        “Sideways Tractate”

                        Brenda Hillman

I’ve been thinking lately: you know how grieving surfaces us,

but doesn't, how it’s under water for its own long, long time and we wait for it

to come back up again, we watch where it went down, we watch

and watch and when the top is clear again, when the clouds move

without being disturbed, we give up and turn away—and miss,

up stream, the entire breach, the slick cull of the veil

of water on her face, her turned down but smiling mouth, her

everything pulled, the flat suck of the t-shirt and shorts and all

they hide but don’t because I’ve had my hands all over that body

and know where every little mole every little shiver every stiff

and slick slide is, Jesus, why do we look away at all why do we even think

what’s gone is sunk and will hit bottom exactly there, that what’s done

is dead to us, why don’t we move where the water moves?  

Because don’t 

the dead drift, after they sink, quite simply, and grow old on the bottom

while we grow old on the top, having turned away, and even though

I’m afraid to say it out loud my lips still feel the surfaces they've touched

and sunk beneath, only they couldn't hold my breath as long,

and short of dying, which is what she did eventually, in another body

of water entirely, I broke the river in two and came to shore and waited

bridges far, far away, beneath what I cannot cross today without thinking

she’d die under one, on land but under one, near the water, ice

creeping up her shoe near the heel first of all—