To the Young Man on the Bridge

The newspaper caption read: “Two officers talk to a young man, name withheld, as he stands on a bridge above the Merrimack River, distraught over learning that his mother is terminally ill.” When I first saw you I could glance up from your image in the paper and out her kitchen doorway watch my mother trim her artemisia, scraps of silver trailing her green wheelbarrow. And I imagined yes, if mine were dying, I would be on the abutment too, about to release the cable ignoring those attempting rescue