Man on Wire, Woman on Couch, Screaming

Watching a film about Philippe Petit wire-walking between Watching a film about Philippe Petit wire-walking between the twin towers of the World Trade Center

Above flapping green awnings and cars idling at stoplights,yellow lines and white lines painted on the asphalt,and the man hawking coffee and donuts from his little metal cart,above cruel, jagged cornices of buildings,above clouds, above gulls and their squawking,

higher than that,a hundred and ten stories up,

one slippered foot glides onto a strung cable, then the other,and he's dancing, holding nothingbut a long pole, balanced against air currents,against laws, against common sense,dancing in God's empty palm!

Slender wisp of a man.     Black-clad crazy clown.

And you, watching the video on your couch,why are you screaming and writhinglike a woman in orgasm or childbirth, like someone being dangledhead down from a great height by one straining ankle?

You're safe as a hamster in your own safe house,watching this man walk on a wire between what used to betwin towers—there used to be a world to step off from;elevators, fax machines, water coolers.

Who'd ever dream the dreamer would outlast steel?

There are moments you pray to be ready forbut seldom are.

He steps off the edge into air,

great sliding whooshes of sheer freedom, sliding glass of pure oxygen

the magnetic dread and pull of it.

Now he kneels.     You stop breathing.     Now he salutesthe towers, the city, all space and time.

Now he lies down,face to the sky, perfectly relaxed,and you want to faint,you who do not trust even the groundto hold you, who think you'll falloff the face of the earth for one misspoken word—

But this.It's like being inside a cathedralof pure terror,skewered by the sound of bells.

And even after he climbs downand is received into the blue-coated armsof a disgruntled New York cop;even after the whole city exhalesand goes back to its ordinary pleasures and ills—

it still goes on, somewhere, forever in the mind, in the living cells.

To step out of the possibleinto sheer wonder. How the dream floatsover the citywhere steel melted and buildings dissolved;

how in the end only the ephemeralendures.