Deborah Digges

[Michael]

It is more than a little scary and frustrating to read of the death
( suicide again) of yet another poet. Deborah Diggs taught at Tufts,
lived in Amherst and is the author of 4 books of poetry. Here is the
title poem from her 2004 book Trapeze. She died yesterday in Amherst,
an apparent suicide.

Trapeze

by Deborah Digges

.....

See how the first dark takes the city in its arms
and carries it into what yesterday we called the future.

Oh, the dying are such acrobats.
Here you must take a boat from one day to the next,

or clutch the girders of the bridge,
hand over hand.

But they are sailing like a pendulum between eternity
and evening, breathless, recovering,

balancing the air.
Who can tell at this hour seabirds from starlings,

wind from revolving doors or currents off the river?
Some are as children on the swings pumping higher
and higher.

Don't call them back, don't call them in for supper.
See they leave scuff marks like jet trails on the sky.