Orange Vermilion is not Gold

More people have committed suicide off the Golden Gate Bridge
than anywhere else in the world.
Maybe that's where it gets its name.
The suspension between life
and the Golden
Gates of death.
My mother once told me
it was the most
beautiful place in the world.
It seemed that way in the blown-up
photograph that hung over our mantel.
Against the sunset, it was only
a silhouette stretching
out across the purple bay
reaching beyond
what I could see,
connecting one world
with another.

I was twenty-eight when I finally saw it.

I remember how disappointed
I was that the bridge
was red
not gold.
Orange Vermilion, my husband corrected.I told him orange vermilion
wasn't gold.


Maybe it was the most beautiful
place in the world but
I was only concerned with
how to hold
onto three kids
with two hands.
My husband figured it out.
He tossed our youngest over
his shoulders and took
the other two by their
fists.
As he pointed to the boats below
and Alcatraz ahead,
(and my youngest cooed at the birds above)
I stared into the disappointingly faded
shade of blue water and wondered
how many people it had swallowed.

When I was nineteen I tried to swallow a bottle of Aspirin.
I didn't make it
halfway before it all came back up.
Maybe it's easier to jump.
Halfway down your body
can't suddenly decide to come back up.
The Golden success
rate is ninety-eight percent.

Lamp post 69 is in the center
of the bridge overlooking
the bay.
That's where we stood
and watched.
56 people have died there,
leaped from that rail my daughter's
hand was curled around.
That's how they keep track.
Not by who you are,
but by the lamp post you were closest to when you jumped.

Neil Peart

Assignment: Write a private-look poem about a public figure

Neil Peart 

Even gods

                  get tired.

Even gods

      sometimes overfill their cup.

Sometimes they drop

                        and jump

    on a bike going nowhere

            and go

nowhere

                  and everywhere.

The blur of the landscape

            every nerve aware

Not all gods want

to be                         worshipped.

their faces on a t-shirt

            sweaty hands pushing

            paper and polycarbonate plastic

     praying that in transition

their flesh may graze

      his holy fingertips.

                  Cast in this unlikely role,

   Ill-equipped to act,

Some gods

      can't pretend a stranger

is a long-awaited friend.

Can a god

            suffer

the loss of a child

      then a wife?

Can a god throw

            in the towel

and say

      I'm done,

done with the Rush,

      I'm done.

There's no protective

      lotion for the limelight,

sometimes its rays

            are harsher

      than the sun.

Sometimes light isn't all

                  it's talked up to be.

Sometimes

      we burn our wings

            flying too close to the sun

Sometimes even gods want to sit

      alone

                  in the dark.

Sometimes, though, all it takes

is a 55,000 mile escape

      to sow a new mentality

            feel the sense of possibilities

                  feel the wrench of hard realities.

Sometimes gods

need to mourn

and find themselves

outside the gilded cage

He's everybody's hero

but his own.

We will pay the price

But we will not count the cost