Only trying to help, he reached—
with his arms, without his wits, without intention, pure reaction,
like an impulse, he flew.
And then he landed, crashed.
He came to the rescue but then needed help,
so much more than anyone could believe, could expect.
Just trying to lend a hand…stop the ball going over the edge, keep the game going,
everything for the game, the kids, his granddaughter–playing.
Unthinkingly, he, trim-fit-tall and lean for his age, stepped a few,
lunged, stretched, caught the ball out of bounds, out of the air,
without hesitation, without strain or struggle, without looking,
not knowing where he was, how close to the edge, the precipice.
And before the paramedics came, as the game continued,
the girls playing with wonder, big worried question marks hanging above their heads,
I slowly, tentatively, nervously peered over the side,
caught a glimpse.
His crumpled body, or a part of it, I don’t know,
being too afraid to see what was down below the field,
down the embankment, he lay there.
And all I could do was shrink back, away,
and rush to my daughter on the field at the end of the game,
steer her away, not to go anywhere near there; don’t look.
But whatever I saw stays,
like destiny or fate or a horror movie scene that really scares the shit out of you,
so realistic, and yet
this was real,
his dis-animated figure lying there in some ball or sprawl or head over heels,
like a toppled monument in the grass,
Sadam Hussein’s giant statue with the stoic expression on its face unchanging
as the stone body keeps teetering by the shoving hundreds of hands, tipping,
and then crashing again and again on replay in the news reels;
I cannot see, can’t summon it up as true,
like a cartoon soccer grandpa looked frozen in mid-lunge,
body angled shot from a cannon in goal keeper’s dive for the mid-air ball,
toward the pendulum arc his outstretched arms and the soccer ball configured
against the backdrop of space, sky,
downward sloping grass and lower-down-the-slope trees,
and then as I saw him there motionless, suspended,
he disappeared,
popped into another universe.
A stranger’s shell broken below,
still and ever so,
no longer ambulatory, though alive but forever stilled–
his arms, legs, pelvis, neck, chest and heart,
except for the abysmal ache of regret and enormous question mark:
how to live now, between oh so close to dying and not dead.
Too fucking unfortunately bad for him, the dumb mother fucker,
his mind still moves–and remembers and remembers.
Like mine–branded burnt.
And they–lawyers, relatives, investigators, insurance adjustors, soccer fans, and the projectionist
behind my eyeballs–will not let you die in me,
you, a mere artifact, statistic, flattened newspaper clipping, docket number,
now a symbol, airy thin and translucent like a story never told,
ancient as memory itself–a living tragedy, chaos confirmed .
In the gaze of the other 