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Emerald City Eulogy
(Suicide at the Montlake Ship Canal Bridge) by WS Fisher  

New Volvos and Saabs crossed the Montlake Ship Canal bridge, a block south of the University of Washington Medical Center passing the yacht club and 17th story research offices. The academic decals moved through the dispersing breath of exhausts - rising, as the specter of an aging Judy Garland raised.  All lingering over the Emerald City on this - its last sunny day in late September of '85, a day right for filming a forty's MGM musical. But today she was too sadly experienced and too harried with the thinned nerves of a toy terrier on amphetamines.  She sang the shrill screams of middle-aged California horns seeking new beginnings, dark winter sirens' screams echoing undefined urgency, a ritual to lure the mists and fog from the canal and the sound for the coming "Great Season Of Unending Rain".  

Here, parking an old VW van with expired plates in the middle of the drawbridge thoroughfare on 23rd Ave., someone jumped off the Mountlake Ship Canal Bridge - twice!  His first plunge, over the west center side-rail into the cold canal, was unsuccessful.  Swimming over, he then climbed, soaked and frenzied, determined not to punctuate his life with yet another failure, to the steep steps and up and across the bridge's street to the east rail.  Leaping into the screams of a drawbridge operator atop a gothic watchtower, he aimed himself at the concrete canal walkway fifty feet below.  The inefficient romance of drowning purged from this last determined impulse of action.

The urbane diffidence of the people broke.  A sorority girl in bright jogging tights stood...then explained to an approaching other "I was just awestruck!" while burying her mother's naive mind in the lock of her hands forever.  Older boys, street surfers with attitudes holding skateboards under their arms in colorful retro-bermudas, leaned over, intent and silent, determined, plucking boldly this rare real red fruit of death into their knowing.  

Beyond the chalk lines, the walkway and the lush grass were awash with the spawn succulent red of glistening ruby slippers, a ripe red summer melon broken open, sowing the ground with diminutive moist opals in the sun - a crown of some exotic Jungle "Lorry" against the gray and green, rendering up to the very first onlookers in quick tiny unison, the wisp of a tiny steaming chorus of last warm breaths.

Then, after the arrival of two ambulances (as if his remains could be shared), the police came.  Freed from the threat of personal violence on this call, worldly and casual, they descended the steps in a film-noir nonchalance standing momentarily still - from above, dots on a child's line drawing with the notion of having won a lottery prize without danger.  Beginning, in a futile attempt along the fits of concrete, they outlined in finite parameters of white chalk anonymous mute dreams.

Mrs Cline at the Door
Groping for the Lock by WS Fisher  

Mrs. Cline at 90, ascending haltingly
the gray concrete steps to her door is blind.
Grasping the weathered iron rail 
and groping  for the lock with her eyes 
permanently closed and skin spotted
and pale, has walked, with cane and
infirmities and her smile, as if everything_
               grandchild with  'acid' burnt mind,
               uncontrollable bowels,
               deceased children,
               sightless eyes, infirmity,
               age and all, are,
               even when gathered into one
               force_unnoticeable; 

               as the gentle breeze is unnoticeable
               when it's mildly circumfusive mystique
               tousles the hair of a young girl
               on a spring picnic outing with a
               freshly found boyfriend.

 Bio: WS Fisher was born in Iowa in '51 to travel through Central America and Southwest USA with his father, a contract BS level geologist who freelanced.  He attended the University of Texas in '72, lived in Peru 1973 & '74 & returned to Iowa State University to complete a degree in English in 1977.  Later, he attended The University of Arkansas briefly and then studied Poetry in the English Department at The University of Washington under Professor Emeritus Nelson Bentley a disciple of Theodore Roethke.  He also studied Theatre at the UW and method acting at The Lee Strasberg Actor's Workshop in Seattle under Doug Dirksen.

He's hayed, worked as a field hand interpreter with Mexican laborers, washed dishes, dug ditches, earned income as a Social Work Coordinator, an Interpreter in the Closed Psychiatric Unit for Criminally insane Cuban Refugees for The Cuban Haitian Task Force, a Research Assistant at The University of Washington Department of Psychiatry and now, a Bilingual Contract Family Therapist for Hispanic families. I reside in Olympia, Washington - USA .

WS Fisher's most prideful accomplishment are his three functional and intelligent grown children.