The Last Time: Letting Go

Doane's Falls
Royalston, Mass

The Last Time: Letting Go 

“Those who act will suffer,

suffer into truth”—

What Aeschylus omitted:

those who cannot act will suffer too.

                                                Jane Hirchfield

                                                Those Who Cannot Act

I’m always going or wanting to

go beyond the ropes the ones

that hold the crowd back from

doing the real heavy looking on

or from being braver than they are

given to believing about themselves.  And so

at the waterfall I chose going down

more carefully and the edge was still,

it was, believe me, feet and feet

away and I lay on my back

and looked beneath the stone

bridge and thought of all that water

that had had been brought up

quiet  up stream right?  Quiet

as you please and who’d even conceive

this mad boil I only really see

if I chance the meeting of the strength

of the guy wire and my own

two feet getting under it finally

I mean I lay there and lay there

and my only sound

was water-fury it wasn’t you

or your hysteria your spit

of names in my face it wasn’t

and for a while I admit I watched you

lay the bait on the trap

so well I fell, I did, wanting you.

But I’m on to you now.  It took me

nearly fifty years of pressing myself

against the edge and finally

it was duck under and walk

out and mind the loose stones

because the water’s coming

fast after the last rain and this stretch

goes down, I walked it all to get

my bearings, another two

colossal waterfalls and I’m just feet

and hands and knees and seeing speed

like that maybe I’m grateful

we parted and you went on

and some of me’s sorry to be

gone but most of me’s not

because when you hit when you spit

when you scream I’m four again

I’m eight and I’m fifteen

and you tell me I ain’t worth living

for and you swallow

your pills hard and I stop

you time and time and time

again I try to make you but that

water’s fast as your concealed

tactical device (I watched you pocket

it)  fast as you coming at me with it

that day and what held you

back?  Not some moral cable,

you’d crossed that long before. 

I’d like to say that maybe it was

I’d gone on beyond needing you

and admitting it, and now it was

you who were afraid, now that you

were alone, no one to blame

and that part of me that’s sorry

is on the rock at your feet

the small one next to your toe

and it’s closing its wings like a cold

moth, exhausted from the water

and then, (exhale, come on) letting go.