(Inspired by film director Tony Scott who jumped to his death from Vincent Thomas Bridge, August 19, 2012) If you’re snug in your life when a man in a red cap jumps from a bridge to an under story, under a wave or a door to the ocean, to a torrent less daylight, more prayer, less phantom, you might not consider the river of children he leaves behind. But when Merle came by in June with her two grandsons and they stood on your porch, tow-headed and particular, you thought of the mother who couldn’t manage her batch of compulsions, you thought of her strategy, and of course everyone now assembles to whisper. You thought of the grass and sky she ripped from those boys, whose gaze will lift-off and follow any woman they see, who said please and thank you just right. And if, on the screen, you nibbled the links of a man wearing loss on his head, the ample rumor of red, you could forgive yourself the invitation to enter, you were surrounded by news, and anyway, you looked up, trying to find a way out – just as a tanager flew toward and peered in your window with his ebony eyes. Where you might have read danger, in departure, there remained only feathers, and later, the perception of roses — not perfume, but stem and thorn, which made you forgive all the red and not- red that you’ve done all your life, and allow even faint shades of fire. Your friend Lenny said he hates people who do that – who jump, who swing forward and don’t bring themselves back, and David claims it’s not what we’re here for. It’s selfish, he says. You think about this, but still have trouble turning hysteria around. You’ve always been open to hope, and the one time you traded your spices for pain, even then, you shook yourself out. Your greatest shelter is pretending all people will remain hoisted on bridges. Last week at Karen’s, with 61 strangers, you recited 108 six- syllabled mantras for Kevin whose life neatly folded around him: om mani padme hum. You built a structure of compassion with your parallel voices, as crimson beads slipped down a string. Though his life digressed into cancer, and the body whittled to syllables and bone, his story went on: om mani padme hum, om mani padme hum. You didn’t know what it meant, but you said it and lifted your head. As many times as it took to be damaged and returned, he stayed, holding to earth, and at the memorial, his three-year old son ran by with goggles, seeing through generations ghosts in invisible water – what did not happen, what did; one man lying beneath the hem of a pylon, the other pulling open a curtain each morning to let in each grimace of light. One man perched in the span between witness and pulse, the other accepting his pardon. Of the man in a cap who saw only feet of the stars, do we care? We have cried for smaller things. Sometimes belief doesn’t fit us at all. Sometimes bodies just fall.