(For Weldon)

In the early evening
of a San Francisco bay suppertime fog
I can see myself walking
on the bridge and him
silhouetted there ready to jump. His foot up on the rail. Y
ou would have had to move fast.
because he certainly was going to
……before he lost his nerve.  

Perhaps if you had called,
Robinson Don’t!!!!  

It might have startled him
just for that brief second.
Thrown him off his resolve
to do this thing
to bail
on all the poetry
ignored and unread
or just not written yet.  

Abandon Fats Waller
De Kooning
The Asphalt Jungle
The Narrow Margin.  

He’s looking down into the water
smoking a last cigarette I suppose. T
he bay breeze upon his face
the smell of salt, somewhere a gull calls
then impulse propelled
him to silently, quickly, simply
climb up and hop of the rail
to drop below into the water
a shadow dart enveloped in gray
and probably be knocked out
instantly by the concussion
of the impact and drown.    

Quickly.  

With a decided lack of
theatrics or dramatics.  

No one saw anything.  

Investors never turned up a body.  

It was 1955 and I was just over a month old.
Newly born into his used up world of despair
and disappointment.  

I wish he
hadn’t been so quick
to jump the ship
of the flesh
leaving the only door
left open
to conjecture
over a staged suicide
or a vanishing act in Mexico.    

Maybe he didn’t
really leave the engine running
and the keys left
swinging in the ignition
of the 54 Plymouth
on the approach to the Golden Gate
shrouded in the July Fog as
night fell like the closing scene
in a RKO Mystery movie
as the Detective writes
in his notebook…  

…But why did victim
make that last payment on the
car a week before ?     
                   From Sometimes Grief Barks up the Wrong Tree   2012