The Jumper

No, not the hunched figure,
standing, with stooping shoulders on a motorway flyover,
above the fumes of speeding traffic
on some grey and dismal afternoon.

Neither is this the hand-knitted variety,
that you received each Christmas
from an old aunty
(who was actually a friendly neighbour of your grandmother’s)

Out Jumper cuts a Messianic figure,
save for the T-shirt and combats.
His arms are outstretched, feet planted firmly
in a tumbled outcrop of rocks.

He stares out across the gaping black abyss.
A blind, prehistoric eye-socket
in the mantle of the earth.
The bottom line lying somewhere deep and unfathomable.

In what must be the ultimate leap of faith
he ascends a moment into the thermal breezes
then descends into the oceanic void
and is gone...

A striped plume of brilliant colour unfurls,
beginning a slow and whirlpooling downward spiral.
Down to a concealed and unchartered zone.

Da Vinci, Vrancic and Lenormand look on smiling
as they decide between them just who should deliver
the acceptance speech.