THE BRIDGE
There is a bridge here, and I see myself
swaying upon it.
The water, the sky, the afternoon light,
the creases between stones, dark and mossy,
the dragonflies, the tiny breeze from their wings.
No human breath is felt along the riverbank.
The bridge is here, and I sway inside it
like a child in a cradle, lulled to sleep to grow.
But I am the cross-section between bygone and nothing,
inconvenient past
embarrassing the present.
Implied promises are less binding than spoken ones.
The bridge is me, and I am the bridge.
What began as a ritual of immurement,
so that the bridge would hold,
gave me the inflexible freedom
that if I want, I, too, may not collapse,
now that I only have stones to bear.
No one comes this way, yet the bridge still stands.