The Crooked Bridge

In my dream I found the crooked bridge.

It reached out of memory, and suddenly I was home again

In a time of trotting horses and clapboard houses.

The bridge was as crooked as the path I have traveled since--

But beautiful for that, in all its rising and descending lines.

I loved it for being familiar,

For being old,

For being trustworthy,

But most of all because you lived at its foot.

The stars pinwheeled and made tracers in a sky Van Gogh would have been proud of;

It was Independence Day 1894--

We thought, "great things are at hand."

I wandered through the crowd,

Knowing I would have to go back to my own strange "present."

Passing through an iron gate, I found what I was looking for and sat down on the grass of a shadowy churchyard.

"I miss her," I whispered, and wept beneath the star-spangled sky.

In the way of dreams, you appeared at my side in your long dress and wrapped your arms around me in the dark.

"Shhh," you said.

"I know," you said.

And then I was back and awake, living alone, making coffee and starting this poem.

________