Pauline Is Falling

from the cliff's edge, kicking her feet in panic and despair as the circle of light contracts and blackness takes the screen. And that is how we leave her, hanging—though we know she will be rescued, only to descend into fresh harm, the story flowing on, disaster and reprieve—systole, diastole—split rhythm of a heart that hungers only to go on. So why is this like my mother, caged in a railed bed, each breath, a fresh installment in a tortured tale of capture and release? Nine days she dangled, stubborn, over the abyss, the soft clay crumbling beneath her fingertips, until she dropped with a little bird cry of surprise into the swift river below. Here metaphor collapses, for there was no love to rescue her, no small boat waiting with a net to fish her out, although the water carried her, and it was April when we buried her among the weeping cherries and the waving flags and in the final fade, a heron breasted the far junipers to gain the tremulous air and swim away.