SageGreenJournal.org
voices out of the West, mostly poetry, personal to planetary
May 5, 2014
Trina Ortega
poet & freelance writer/editor
Managing Editor of the Mountain Flyer
Carbondale Colorado
The Gate of the Setting Sun
It’s not the longest bridge in the San Francisco Bay
nor is it the greatest engineering feat
but the Golden Gate Bridge is the most alluring.
It's both left brain and right brain
Hard edged and swoopy
Grounded to the earth yet floating in the sky
Hundreds of vertical cables play in concert
with two gigantic spanning cables to offset the weight of the voyagers
The elegant steel towers — with their geometric
Art Deco chevrons and rectangles — anchor the load
Some days their magnificent reach
even pulls a little bit of heaven from beyond the fog
It is a monument.
It is a gateway for some who venture across
to play in the redwoods
to splash in the waves of the Pacific
or simply to reach a quieter home along the shore
Others seek a different kind of journey from the bridge
They’re called “jumpers” – these people who want to disappear
Jumpers who can’t face the unfixable
Jumpers tired of asking: What does it matter anyway?
Jumpers, who take a leap of faith,
desperate that the next life will have an answer
A friend once talked about how she sought out such a bridge.
In the heart of her small mountain town,
she stood on a concrete span 30 feet above a cold wintery river
She calculated the plunge and lamented the short distance
But from the walkway of the Golden Gate, it is 245 feet to the water
The fall takes approximately four seconds
and the speed has been estimated at 75 miles per hour
It is a 98 percent surefire suicide
Only 34 jumpers of more than 1500 have lived to tell
Those figures make it the nation’s No. 1 hot spot to die
A suspension bridge is built to hold exponential load
and the Golden Gate bears the sorrows of so many lost souls.
When the engineer designed it,
I don’t think he had this kind of burden in mind.
How do you calculate the weight of someone’s world?
A layer of paint on the gable-shaped hand rail of the bridge
hides chips and scratches of tourists names
Did you feel these imperfections, too, jumper?
Were these scars the last thing you touched?
We are all just visitors, aren’t we.
The Golden Gate now quietly harbors your fear and fatigue
It is a monument … of despair
But it doesn’t have to be
You don’t have to disappear
over the 4-foot-tall rail and off the 32-inch-wide beam
that even has its own special name -- “the chord”
Four seconds is not very long but it’s long enough
for a newborn baby to take her first breath
long enough for a hello and a handshake
long enough to share in a first kiss
long enough to hear the words “in remission”
Four seconds is not very long but it’s long enough
to realize you’ve made a mistake
to long for something you can’t take back
One one thousand,
two one thousand,
three one thousand,
four one thousand
Between the tall towers of the Golden Gate, along the walkway
where the ends are the beginnings and the middle is the end
are little blue signs that warn of the consequences of jumping.
If you stop for just a second, you can see the words:
“There is hope”