The 2nd Sabbath of March

Beauty or Flight

by Denver Butson

The man who jumped from the highway bridge one afternoon

who drove his car along in rush hour traffic

then carefully pulled it over, fussed with something briefly on the dash,

so casually that another driver passing

thought he was looking for a map, or a cassette tape,

that had slid during the last turn before the bridge — that's all —

and then stepped out of the car, standing, stretching,

and closing the door routinely, a man in need of a break

on a long drive, a man untroubled by his next appointment,

a man who felt himself growing tired and thought

he needed some air, looked up the highway once

and then down at the almost frozen rows of traffic

under the haze that lingered above the bridge

and then broke simply and suddenly into a run, a dead run,

one motorist called it, crossing in front of his car

and not even stopping at the railing between the bridge

and the empty space beside the bridge, entering that space

and opening his mouth in what one driver called a scream,

though she heard no sound above the drone of traffic, and

other drivers saw as a gasp for breath, not unlike a child takes

when diving into a backyard pool, and he executed then

a nearly perfect, if a little rushed, swan dive out across the space

next to the bridge and into the water ninety-five feet below.

One fisherman in a boat a little upstream

saw the man who jumped from the highway bridge,

the moment he left the bridge and entered his dive, and the fisherman

swore he saw not a man but a large bird, a falcon or an eagle,

shot mid-flight by an angry driver, a large bird

who was trying to regain some sense of beauty, some sense of flight,

in its final dying seconds.