The Choreography of Four Hands Descending
That day in September, the smoke evacuated
even the pressed scent of cider from our skin,
red apples went black in mid air before gripping
the grass near the tree, split grins turned
down where the juice dribbled swiftly to lick up
the blaze. One at a time, they rolled over and
gave up their pulpy white ghosts, each one
alone on its float through the orchard.
Forty miles west, in Manhattan, two joined hands
and made the leap together, campfire songs rising
up from the soft street below, her dress rising over her
knees, her waist, her thick mane of curls falling upward
somehow like wet leaves on the updraft of laughter
now reaching the thirty-ninth floor and still rising.
How could the radio know the whole building would
crush up the chorus of Jack and Diane, two minutes
before the man locked his fingers with hers in a double
bunched jump to the lake of fishless blue fire?
These two with their last thoughts bumping like
chestnuts just dumped in a bucket: her wondering
whether her husband had savored the waffles that
morning, him hoping his wife would remember which
tie he'd loved most when the gathering called for
starched silk. He thought of his daughter, sandwiched
himself on her school desk between Social Studies
and lush locker gossip. Beside him, the woman gripped
the tipping milk jug tighter as she sent her son away
with cereal, luck-wishes finding their way toward the
field where he stuttered mid-second, the soccer ball
rolling to meet the cupped palm of the net; it would
make him a hero. Below, the yellow hats of firemen
shifted, startled lids fluttered to cluster the sight of
their flight, two strangers taking the plunge into
history's shutter-struck cup. At the orchard, apples
lay dumbstruck in singular rows, wanting nothing
in the end but hands they might clasp, and unclasp.
