8/4/2019 On a Print of the Williamsburg Bridge

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On a Print of the Williamsburg Bridge

I approach the arch of the bridge,

Rise in diagonal to mid-plane and gaze:

A city of monoliths and thumbprints,A city bleeding with sunset.

Wind casts its glance over the river

Seeks the final angle, the close walls

Of Manhattanhalts, then leaps

From the metallic heart of an island

To the tough grace of shore.

You and I join here, focus somehow.

Our lives behind counters and cash registers

Disappear. Were alone, motionless,

Our faith placed in the image of a bridge,

In water patterned in herringbone, in the breeze

That counterstrokes the current.

Weve arrived and we will remain

Until landscape releases us,Releases itself in us as if organizing

Familiar stones and stanchions,

Pylons and cables in a new pattern,

Eternal and instantaneous.

This motion is inward

At once a discovery and a disguise.

Their city is an impossible city.Night makes its transformations.

Traffic thrusts in ignorance out

Beyond a captive world and we remain;

Our vision remains. Wind and water

Flow through, the bridge vaults above

The human stillness we have made.