The Very Idea of a Bridge

is flypaper to fog’s moisture, suspended beauty, as Frommer’s said to the populace traveling abroad, a loneliness litmus test in the midst of traffic, in the mist and passage flung between two concrete points, an act of faith, abutment to abutment riveted to the spot, in the spotlight, International Orange aglow, a-go-go, to-ing and fro-ing and flaking from the outside in. Airplanes on the hook may see cable but cannot hear it maundering on, humming with vibration in dog range, Orca range, sensate clarity we mere mortals ache to know, this animal of eighty thousand miles of wire twined together. The curvature of rainbow in reverse attracts the girl from up north, the pearl in her throat, the heft and hurl of a body falling to the deep. The very idea is an occupation for sea salt and oxidation, ocean and ions combining to find the inner primer, zinc silicate base, while those in love for the first time try to climb the chain link fence at night on a whim to finally do it, walk the span, put hand on the organ erect in periphery from just about anywhere the city rises to a crest, mellifluous land, best horizon bending the western gap after water passed through, filled the valley basin. This moment between has been and will be, this dash of being, improbably fast to the tule raft, is a rush of susurration and tires rolling in rain, is the give within wiry suspension, and is resolute. We see waves froth below trusses and try to see through to crash and crush, scuttling murk swirling the I have always been here strength with O, the grace, what we build to take the lashing. It holds fast, this bridge, this smidgen of thought begging us to prove something grand with it, dress the sky for a night out, a whirlwind romance the stationed cop can’t stop, raised palm in warning, in supplication out on this exposed I-beam reaching for beacon, flash, flash, flash on the blank page of yonder.