April and I went for a walk yesterday to that beautiful little fern gully and its waterfall that I found a little while ago. Together we came across this other path that had a broken bridge and a path that led to nowhere. This poem came out of that discovery.
The bridge
Bent from the water flowing past,
Guide rails misshapenly tilted forward,
From too much water
moving past, too often, too fast
Humanity’s discards, destroying,
Weapons carried by the flow,
Except for the forgotten bridge,
No one knows how
the scars of jetsam’s blows,
Have broken this bridge’s back.
Slowly the weeds accumulate,
Neglect gives permission to creation,
For the slow process of death and life,
To begin once again,
And, nature starts to reclaim
what was always hers,
The path not taken,
The bridge forgotten,
Is where new shoots begin.
These remnants are reminders,
That a pilgrim’s discoveries,
Are all paths taken before,
The surprise witnessed
Is through the eyes of my path,
That I walk once in this life,
The bridge invites me to understand,
Brokenness, my jetsam and its damage,
The love of discovery,
The beauty of sitting with brokenness,
Fresh shoots breaking through,
And, how brief time makes bridges,
worn paths and human inventions.
