Untitled (draft, ca. 2003)

Her ballerina’s foot
dropped on a manhole cover
Con Ed had wired mistakenly.
Ample sums were paid the family.
But what psychologist
can rewire the brain,
bring the subject back to life?
How much rewiring
can one clinical psychologist do,
she the electrician
we rely upon
for our ground fault?

Hers was a brilliant career,
rewiring children
to work again.
When her slipper,
silk or synthetic,
arched on the manhole cover
in the East Village
she'd abandoned the dance,
according to friends.
Volts in thousands
could not bring her
to leap again.

A manhole cover,
waffled for water
to flow through aqueducts,
was wired,
though inadvertently
by Con Ed,
a brilliant career perished
when the foot,
housed in a dancing slipper,
conducted volts
in the thousands–
as if the sun
had sought a hole
to pass through
en route to Dis
or other depths
for which she was too good.

Currency moves traffic,
drives the Dow up
sends kids to college.
Current, pushed through wrong paths,
drives vital numbers down,
and being lightning without revelation,
bruises the heart but leaves
each hair on the head untouched.

Who will rewire the children
she'd left behind,
the street that felled her
now rewired right?