Walking On Water

WALKING ON WATER Saint of the Golden Gate Bridge they called her, blessing the crowd with her tears, performing to the cheers of the enchanted, flinging, first her pink raincoat, her high heeled shoes, fluttering down like doves, dancing, twisting out of her red satin dress, a naked Magdalene on her way to heaven. The distance for walking the water is always two feet, suspended in mid-air before the dive, hands whirling over her head, gracefully, then the splash, the blue on blue of water. The scream; a long stretch of scar. This is the way it ends, Sister, your knees jacked up around your chin. A wild eyed woman walking on water. Yes, Sister, yes. You were floating, safe above the water, like egrets hovering against the sky. We saw the confusion of flesh on water. A dark-haired woman who knew she had found the ocean, spread-eagled on her unhealed promises, imperfectly still, her feet out of running room, hands out of time, and the silence always loses the beat. She lived dying, waiting on the edge of life, an end of meaning. I’m brave, she was known to have said once. I have courage. Be my liar, as she would say. But she was only brave on water. Only that. Yet, there aren’t many who could face this, who could look into the eyes of death like a lover. Surely she caressed his eyes. Surely she twice sang his name, a woman of sorrows drowning in sin. She whirled and twisted. The watchers were confused. They didn’t know this act. They didn’t even know themselves anymore. We all became strangers. She won finally. She heard the cries, saw the vision. The night came sooner that day. In a different month, she would have turned to us, appearing from doorways, a five and dime hooker who lost all her johns. They won’t be your liars, Sister. Life stacks emptiness with soberness, saving up the numbered days of your life that cover you like water, wave by wave, until the dreams become visions. They say men are more sensible. They not only listen to the wisdom of mathematics, they learn not to be hysterical. In spite of this, they fail discipline. They have a love of falling too. A love of water. We pulled her out, the water washing over us. The sand gritting our way back to shore, back to reason, back to all ways of living. Two old players questioning the silence, caressing the heaven in her. Mark Randolph Conte Copyright Poem magazine, 2000