A Language

For Michael Ondaatje

There’s a story
of a young woman walking by mistake
out onto an unfinished bridge,
being blown off, falling,
being caught by a welder,
his arm wrenched from its socket,
the two of them making their difficult way
up into the dark, miraculous
street. She takes a pair of wire cutters
from his belt, rips part of her skirt
to make a sling. He will learn more
of her carefulness: how she shakes out
a tablecloth, folds it
into panes. Now, because they don’t know
each other, there’s an intricate
balance between them, as in tending a horse—
the glancing, diagonal approach
with the bridle; the cleaving
to the animal’s left side, currying
and mounting. There’s the woman’s
sudden sympathy for the man’s face, that makes her
search into it a long time—the man’s eyes
elsewhere—on the stiff rays
of pine needles, at whatever has settled
in the tall grass. When he looks up
at her, it’s as if there’s a balcony,
a stiff wind with his hat
sailing into it, tagging away
toward a far body of hills.
I know a time when a bridge
fell, heavy with traffic in a winter
dusk—a fracture and the two sides
sheared away. Each person on the bank
had one secret thought—”I was right
not to believe in it.”
So in the middle of the night
I rest my hand on your hip
to have it apprehend a quiet
form, a body, whole.