The Bridge

 

They had removed a stump,

And the crew stood around admiring their work.

Above them the sky rusted,

And the sun melted behind the tops of trees.

Then the clouds grew red like a furnace

Inside when the logs burned

And the fire roared in the rough metal belly.

 

Through the Aspen trees Melvin saw again

The creek, that meandered to his farm house veering thirty feet away

And then down into the valley off towards the sea

And places that embraced Americas water ways

One by one.

He walked over the high back rocks

From the long, dirty field

Often stumbling in the cold water.

 

“I need to build a bridge here,”

He told the wild birds.

 

At nigh while the winds

Touched and nudged at the shingles

Of his home, he lay in the darkness

With his wife Emile

And they both rested in the space between them,

And they both felt the distance

Like a long breath of exhaustion,

Or a trip on which only one will go.

 

He felt the emptiness

But as a farmer he had no language,

No skill to know a woman’s heart or make words

That would soften it

Or make the road less bumpy

From utterance to utterance.

Often his voice was weary from the field.

All day with a coarse and willful crew

Dulled his edges and often he simply slept

In his large lounge chair from fatigue

Fallen asleep amidst dreams

Of water and high corn

And stalks making a rushing sound

Touched by warm southern winds.

 

In the morning

He would wake to the smell of hot coffee.

 

The days moved in a cycle

From sun up to sun down.

The silence at night rushed across

The corn fields of his soul.

 

One night it started a fire there

That lit the sky of his mind and it was

In the smoking, roaring conflagration of this idea that the bridge

Emerged like a growing thought.

 

The next day

He hired carpenters and engineers

And went with his crew to get the wood.

The bridge would be canopied, and there would be places

Where you could sit and admire the creek.

 

The work progressed

The supports went in, the road bed

The super and sub structures.

He was proud of this bridge

Even though it supported no major thoroughfare

And brought him not one dime of money.

 

Emile hated the bridge.

There was so much to be done around the farm

So much equipment to maintain, the water sluices improved,

The tanks welded in places

And all this went by the way side.

 

The roof of the bridge canopy

Sported a fine brass rooster weathervane.

 

All the neighbors came to see the bridge.

The sun rose and set over its dark shingles

And the brass rooster spun with the wild winds that blew

Across the corn fields.

But the darkness between Emile and Melvin,

Quickened and turned a dour shade over their lives.

 

One morning Melvin sat down

To his coffee,

And said,

“I know you hate the bridge.” 

“I do,” Emile said. “It cost too much.”

 

Melvin put down the coffee and walked out

The screen door to tend to his fields, his crew was already

Working in the hot sun,

Working the corn that hissed and crackled

In a rush like a thousand voices.

 

He had to be clearer.

 

That night in the barn as carefully as he could

On one of the left over boards

Melvin found the words to say what was in his heart

And carved them there.

 

Melvin took Emile to town the next day

And they were both in the cart

And she knew she was going to have to pass

Over that bridge again

And that made her angry.

So the trip up to the bridge was bitter and sullen.

But as they neared the thing

Her eyes caught the shape of something new

Under the brass weathervane.

 

“Pull up” she said.

“Now stop,” she said.

 

The wood sign read.

“Dedicated to the love of my life,

Emile Johnson.”

 

Melvin sat in the wagon seat

And looked out over the corn field

Waiting for her to say “Let’s go.”

 

She did,

As she slipped her hand into his

And smiled all the way to town.

 

By J.M.Lamoreux