SUZANNE LUMMIS
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Jump
So what’s it like
to jump from the Golden Gate Bridge
he asked—my brother asked—into
the face blown wavy as spit salt
and foam rinsed sand.
Hardly anyone lives he tells me,
my brother the paramedic dropped in
to visit, now skimming the morning news
for a story, maybe a few lines.
Funny, he says, the guy last night reeked
like the ones who come up dead.
It’s as if when they smack down
the skin shreds, the raw flesh drinks sea –
not the blue, frothy surfaced one we
dream of but ooze and oils, the old,
unwashed, death infected sea.
Well, those aren’t his words exactly.
But he does say the jumpers reek
as if—it sounds disgusting but—the sea
pushed through their pores. Today,
the morning after, nothing’s
in the news. He sets the paper down. So,
who knows if the guy pulled through?
Paramedics never hear. They move on.
Some years back, he says, statistics
starting climbing—hurdling—
toward a milestone, the one thousandth
jumper since the bridge went up
(that is, of those we know about).
Right then the CHP quit counting –or
anyway, they wouldn’t tell the press—
then resumed when someone sailed
past the mark.
Who needs all those dreamers
conveying their Saranwrapped last notes
to their deepest pockets, driving
the long, gray Bay Bridge
to the one whose cables swoop
and rise, the one we call “Golden”
(though the factory named that paint
“Vermillion Orange”).
Who needs them parking, strolling
the walkway, tearless, to blend
with the lesser Sad, to avoid
the watchman’s eye, then abruptly
hauling up and over, each one
hoping Nine Hundred Ninety Nine
went over just before?
It’s a job to try and talk them down,
a job for Coast Guards combing
through the waters, and for those called in
to collect what floated up.
They call it “blunt force trauma”—
crushed ribs and caved-in spleens.
They imagine hitting sleek as blades,
the dreamers, so they won’t come up at all.
Some don’t. And some swell like brine-
soaked sausages then roll, eventually,
onto the Farallen Island shores, thirty
miles out, where crabs trim them down.
But there was one jumper—Baldwin—
1985, who lived to tell the tale.
The instant he flew past the “chord,”
that beam—the last hard true thing
a jumper glimpses before air—he knew
every dumb mistake he’d ever made
could be fixed, except
this one. My brother stirs his coffee.
Breakfast things still settle on the table,
Though their end is growing near,
our beloved parents live. They must be
close by in that house my father bought
so many years ago, in those rooms.
The sea’s blunt force is trauma,
though it hardly seemed so then.
As seen through that first-floor window,
you’d think its smoky greyish blue
could breathe a man in whole and turn him
into that, bluish smoke and distance.
I love my brother—stupid to say that,
right, in a poem? So literal like
that, so banal? Then let’s say it’s not
a poem but a jump, four and one half
seconds from the bridge to the Bay,
and I’ve used up three. I love
my brother’s humor, that firefighter
kind, that paramedic kind—
call it “Dark Survivalist”— the comedy
of those who see death every day.
And what he tells me next, in the end,
makes us both laugh.
What happened? Did he answer?
My brother looked at the drowned one
still alive. The head gaped and lolled.
From nose and ears he bubbled like a toy.
He gibbered—Jim could hardly
make out what. Old Pepsi jingles, 80s
sit-com scores…
My brother leaned in and spied a clearing
in one eye.
So what’s it like to jump from the Golden Gate Bridge?
And the drenched one said—and who knows
if a clear word ever rose from him again—
he said, just before he seemed to unfold
inside himself like a diver and head
down, he said, just before his eyes
turned toward the sea and rolled
from sight, he said, looking
directly at my brother, man
to man, and by God right
from the horse’s mouth
if ever a horse’s
mouth there
was, he said
Dude,
it was awesome!