Glad to Be Human. Irene O’Garden

appears

      in response

      to our attempt

      to grasp it.

Geographies

A Visit to Liberty

      First, the souvenirs: Copper Lady, Plastic Lady, Lady in the Snowball, coinbanks, cedarboxes, thick and tasseled pencils, placemats postcards mirrors spoons cups metal paper rubber bear her blue image. Also fries dogs shakes.

      Buy our Admit Ones from the whitehaired grizzlejawed joe sparkling under his cap. A short wait, then board our red white and blue tidy ferry.

      Stamping children, flappy flags, ziz of nylon jackets. Every size jeans, polyesters, gold bridges, camera necklaces, not just Americans, but Citizens of Everywhere.

      Hair of every kind streaming over faces. Chiffon scarves fluttering, fluttering. The violins within my blood begin to rise.

      Thickhand men derope our boat. The Hudson flushes under us. We’re off.

      Grey and black and navy hugely tower. The pier disappears as we peer at the flannel and seersucker buildings compressing.

      Hoisted like masts in the brisk ferry air, we squint through sun-and-spray-tugged lashes. Teeth dried by windward smiles. Fluttery cheeks. Ferry bottom slaps on the river’s knee. Part of a sandwich flies by.

      Old fort, gunhouse, then Ellis on the right. Pink brick sinks in my eyes. My stomach says in another life I knew that place, off the stink of the ship chilly chilly damp harsh pulled shoved cursed, named another name, I embraced my partly hideous destiny. Kindness was not yet popular.

      Bright oblongs, slices of light, sun punctuates the water. City reduced to a pattern of blocks, gull-garlanded.

      ◊◊◊

      And there, as silver and as green as juneborn leaves, she twists. There she grows now, so tall, the tallest woman you have ever seen.

      Yes, you can even look under her armpit. What a great big holy face! The boat is tipping, cameras clicking.

      The beacon herself welcomes us. Green goddess in the harbor, bearing light and knowledge. Her grotto is the open sky, the water is her shrine, appearing to the faithful with dignity divine. Grave and peaceful, calm and holy, she stands at the nation’s door.

      The ferry slows, the ramp swings down. A hundred faces wondershown: awe, delight, craning necks, clasping hands, chewing gum, lug the sliding baby, rumpled pamphlets, shrieks of laughter from the girls. Chiffon scarves fluttering, fluttering.

      Rubber legs on terra firma. Up steps and steps and steps, wide grey group steps.

      Lighted displays in the pedestal, sepia photographs—not now! not now! To the top to the top!

      Black and many stairs, wrought iron. We are not in a building, but a woman. Race to the top to see whom she attracts.

      Gigantic folds of gown softly corrugate the space. Look, there’s the book, that’s the torch! We are up so high my body is reverberating. My thighs retract my knees.

      This single skinny black steel rail spiraling out the orangelit green is all that holds me from downward spiral. That, and absolute knowledge I will not fall. Death is offered us in many moments. We refuse it every time but once.

      I do not even need the rail.

      ◊◊◊

      Lady Liberty, Lady Liberty, who’s inside your noble face? We whirl in your brain, Lady L. Here in her head, we are Liberty’s dream.

      Gaze at the green horizon. See the hazy town. Glide with the garbage barges. Green grass patches all round.