On Bridges: Leaving and Arriving

Leaving is what they’re best at. Homes, jobs, lovers, debts farewelled in a single step.

And yet we cross them ever backwards, and think the path behind much kinder than the one ahead.

Ignore the cars and trucks and trains, our freight, impossible for them to hold weighs nothing.

Famous or slabs of wood, their role the same as Moses, “I have seen the promised land”.

Arriving can be difficult for them. And souls, still caked in foreign dust are often lost.

Our purpose is too raw, too evident, expecting signs, we rarely see the road beneath our feet.

And fast, collecting days like plastic bags, reluctant now to check the where, the here, of deep ravines.

Simple or steel-embraced, our need the same as Moses; to reach the other side.