Bridges
i
Walk a bridge to connect, to pass
over a gulf. To be on a bridge is to be
neither in one place or another. Rarely
destination, bridges embody journey.
ii
Avignon's stone bridge stops mid-Rhone
tantalising with just four extant arches
of its once majestic twenty two.
Even computer imaging and years
of research can't line up remnant piles.
Must have been zig-zags
for added strength, perhaps, in floods.
Benezet the shepherd it's said,
850 years ago, with Divine push, hefted
and hurled a huge rock in the river
which became stone one of Pont
d'Avignon. Benezet's journey ended
with his interment within the bridge
before its completion. Disinterment
nearly 500 years later,
scored him patron sainthood.
iii
Just north of Melbourne, two parallel bridges
span Arthurs Creek. Only one takes traffic.
Burke's duplicated concrete and bitumen
bridge towards Nutfield, flat and functional
but adjacent, original Burke's Bridge,
a timbertrestle construction, now spattered
with leaves and gum bark peelings, blocked
at either end with boulders, remains
the real enchanter. Patrick Burke, orchardist
and nurseryman settled on 20 acres in 1864.
None of which explains why supporting posts
either side of the creek are not parallel.
iv
Alighting from a bridge makes you feel lighter.
Puts a little spring in your step or your tyres.
You've left somewhere behind. Crossed.
You're somewhere else. What now?
But it takes now uncrossable bridges
to remind us how well stuck we might be.
bw
8.1.14
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