Bless Him -------

by Nanette Rayman

He tried real hard to take his own life.

All the people on Wall Street acted

as if wind blew them past. They didn’t even bless him.      

No one stopped to help him. I put my arm around him       

and called an ambulance. I blessed him.             

He asked me to ride with him to St. Vincent’s Hospital.

He was younger than me by a lot. With no self-

pity, just seams of jangling sadness, he said: My baby left me. I love her

so. I need her. Wind blows up and down the stairs of The Stock Market.

Administrative assistants pull at their pencil skirts and lean like lamp posts.

He asks me to go for coffee forgetting he’s taken too many pills.

To get swallowed up by this sweet sick man I would descend like

a spastic bird. To descend quickly into a subway station I would

have to leave him among the financial ruins, among the suits

and stone and browning bananas not sold today on fruit stands.

I waited with him ‘til the paramedics came. I went with him

to St. Vincent’s Hospital and watched the charcoal shoved

down his throat. Nurses were angry at him. They did not bless him.

Not everyone who falls is caught. Not everyone is saved.

It never stops now, the stars, the what-happened

which has no ground to stand on—Baruch HaShem,

I’m saving myself for someone now,

falling off my pumps on Wall Street.

I thought I saw him walking toward me today.