The Bridge

Perhaps there was a time, some distant past,
when lovers took this pastime slow—when time,
    that rider, didn’t flick crop fast,
        when it was not a crime

to weigh with caution all your suitors’ offers,
when safe on either bank your love was built
    with care across Sex River, coffers
        sunk through the gendered silt

by teams of laborers to solid rock
so that the mortared piles could rise and take
    the loaded arch. Romantic stock
        suggests that we should make

the leap of faith that this was so. Perhaps.
But while the whipping pinch of pace can make
    us wish that there has been a lapse
        from lawful order, I’ll take

it as an axiom that human kind
has no more changed than have our criminals:
    the muddy current, unconfined,
        swept all before, the drawls

of prayers were pleas to catch hand, jump upon
time’s back, and gallop. Just like mine. Take me—
    before the turbulence has drawn
        us off, and we’re at sea.

—2002?

I seem to have misplaced the file with the date I wrote this; by the subject and style, some time in 2002 seems likely, some time after first drafting "Iteration".

---L.