Ballad of Bridges

Each one was familiar
yet its peril new and desperate

over water not deep enough to account for
believing more in visions of mangle and gore

only visions, after all,
amalgamating into fear.

The subconscious is always painting its face
in Imagination and Doubt.

So if I’ve crossed bridges before
in the sullenness of day’s brooding;
wearing the joker’s frozen face and under heavy summer suns;
bumper to bumper and in lanes too narrow to sneeze;
seduced often by the whir and wind of commuters

then what is it with water?

That we can’t enter it tenderly?

Must always rip and tear it
with the anxiety of our bodies?