Daybreak at the crossing. The icy rivulet flows somewhat broader than a stride. Strange. You pause, and then you leap. At the apex of your quick bow over the murmuring water, tingles envelop you, from your bare head to your sandaled feet.
Over a labyrinth of posts, braces, and crossbeams (trestles in frozen march across the canyon), a flatbed truck rolls slowly, carrying upright, crated & cradled, a circular mirror, diameter 100 inches, 4.5 tons of glass. The procession ripples in the water pooled below.
Lighter than air, a promise arcs overhead, transparent to the sun’s rays. The empty sky above the high rock walls, the alders swaying in the breeze, the stream gleaming among wavering shadows, all testify: in the end, no one can drive their dreams away.
When floodwaters stove the trestle bridge, a Throop graduate recalled envisioning a grace-heavy arch curving above the streambed, the abutments firm in rock, in earth, with the deck on spandrels set to the harmonies of the graduate’s dancing numbers.
A plain girder bridge with two piers. Thick concrete sinewed with rebar. Simple lines. There, under dense gray clouds, my father leans over the guardrail to watch the cutwaters battle the torrent. I listen to boulders thud past and downstream.
Poetry & Photo: © Robert Savino Oventile 2024