For A., because sometimes it takes a long walk back to find where we left our hearts. Here’s to all the water under the bridge – and getting over it.
I both love and hate bridges. I love looking over the edge at the water, I love the sounds of chuckling eddies over rocks, I love the image of my shadow elongated above flat green water. I love that when my brother was four, he decided, in the state park, to relieve himself off of a bridge, and Tech Boy had to grab him and … sort of shelter him from the error of his ways. (Heh. I can tell stories like this now because he’s twenty, and needs to be embarrassed now and again.)
I hate bridges, too. I hyperventilate slightly going over the Golden Gate Bridge, every single time, mainly because I keep thinking that at any moment, people could either be jumping off, or having head-on collisions. (You know what I mean, if you’ve driven when they’ve got the middle lane taken away. Sometimes the whole Wonders of the Road thing misses me, and I only see Hwy 101 and the 580 as crazy labyrinthine rat traps designed by sadistic fiends. You’ll note I also don’t drive much, and there are fingerprints in my steering wheel from my death grip.)
Today, bridges are a metaphor. I always like those.
short cut?
stepping stones beckon
perhaps a safer crossing
or new ways to drown?
not really trying
meeting you halfway
I stretch, but leave hands fisted
Pity. You’re beyond reach.
getting there
taking careful steps
progress, inevitable.
the reward of “wait.”
(Or, this version also appeals:)
organically
take forward steps.
possess your soul in patience.
progress, naturally.
Poetry Friday is being celebrated at The Opposite of Indifference today.
I’m just reading this today. I’m going to print it and put it on the wall. “not really trying” got me. The metaphor of the whole series is very apt, in a lot of ways.
I drove across the Golden Gate Bridge once, and it was kind of a thrill. The whole time, I was saying right out loud to myself in my car, “I am driving across the Golden Gate Bridge!”
I feel like that going across the bridge; it’s part thrill, part scream. Oh, look! The red bits of the bridge are right above me! Oh, my GOSH! Stay in your lane!!!!
We’re all walking across the bridges with you, A. – and I think of you braving that highest bridge you routinely force yourself over, that scary trestle thingy, and I KNOW you can do this. ♥
I did say that to The One Who Refuses to Even Touch the Bridge, that there is nothing I can’t deal with, nothing I can’t do. I maybe don’t WANT to deal with things, but I can. Yes. I. Can.
Possess your soul in patience. Oooh. Very zen. I like it. Can’t do it, but I like it!
I had part of the idea for my first book—Letters From Rapunzel—-when I saw an ad for a bridge for sale in New England. I didn’t know you could sell a whole bridge. Of course, now, I’m learning about musical bridges…go, me!
I cannot possess my soul in patience, either.
But, it’s such a nice turn of phrase, such good advice.
Pity it’s utterly out of reach of ordinary mortals.
Gorgeous snippets of the metaphor in your haikus.
(love the bridge story of D/D!)