Swan Dive

To jump without benefit of wings

To make an Acapulco of belief

Leap of faith. To hope for water

and yet risk rock

No impetuousness then

No daredevil expostulations

Just the taste of a descending sky

and to feel the imminence

of ocean

Sunlight on clear water

Melancholy is a red sky

and her dreams are boats

no one can bust or blow

out to sea

She stands on a ledge

tests a strong wind

If God is a hand

may it catch us as we fall

Into thy hands...

Jump then

And she does.

Husband in the shower right now. Tapping on the computer, half-watching a repeat of Antiques Roadshow on the television. Listening to little bird-like grandmothers discuss the dusty paintings that have been in their family 'since I don't know when' and have hung, perhaps undecoriously, over their fireplaces for years and years... discovering they are worth thousands and thousands! The flush of surprise on their faces... the chin quivering with thoughts of an easier retirement. Is there some object that she owns, she wonders, that is secretly worth so much? The painting over her own fireplace perhaps? Hardly... a large piece from a Russian dude in Brooklyn... very modern and yet 'anatomically correct.' The reaction of her mother the first time she saw it ... the quiet 'oh my' that is somehow a lengthy dissertation on both aesthetics and morality. To realize that the things that are worth most to her would probably be worthless to the rest of the world. A red leather-bound album of wedding photographs. A family Bible. Her husband's books, inscribed to her. Those small things, somehow priceless in their own right. And of course the damp man, cheerfully toweling himself in the bathroom....