The Cooper River Bridge

107 The Cooper River Bridge P. C. Bowman We are between Sumter and the three batteries That rattled even Lincoln into madness. The guns are gone, replaced by a stand of trees Doubling themselves mildly in the water And a yachting club. We wave from the ferry To the indolent bellies aboard That never darken. There is no answer. Fat men on yachts are exempted from waving. We are headed upstream to the naval yard When we see the bridge arcing and dropping To touch the midstream island, then rise again Like a sewing needle over water. The kid from U.S.C. whose summer job Is to repeat the history of this place Three times a day is on the intercom: In '65, while molding the massive femur To our right a casting platform fell With three young men, translating them Into concrete. Our minds still full of Sumter And the stern gray Yorktown hovering in the bay, This news strikes hard. As we pass We search the stone for conformation, For the back of a weathered hand Peeling to bone in the sun, a bright blue Scrap of workshirt flapping Out from the strict facade. Though this is not a day for signs Somehow the mind is relieved, the distance broken Between us when I think of them leaving That morning, putting one of the good apples In the lunchpail and waving good-bye. I try to remember the images fresh Then in their minds. Kennedy in Dallas, Khrushchev crying for Disneyland, and all that has happened since Passes like water. 208 Someone rises at the stern And then another, and soon most of us are up Waving at the three chosen men in the pillar As if we can see them suspended there Like almanacs dropped halfway to the floor They will never have to strike, spread-eagled and waving back, Saying, Yes we were there and it was a bitch And painful too but look at us now Preserved beyond our reckoning or deserts, The fortunate spirits of this good harbor. (Medical College of Virginia) ...