THE BRIDGE CAUGHT FIRE

“Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts.” Thich Nhat Hanh

                                                                                       photo:T.Kraft
The Bridge Caught Fire

She saw me laughing
just on the other side
of his confused memory.
She saw me laughing
and questioned the
surging floods, the deprived tides,
the darting fish, and
slow drinking cranes.
There was not enough time for rain
to return to water to continue to nourish
the flow under the bridge or put out the fire.
(The connection senses eroding years,
slowly decomposing marred minutes,
charred wood, and fractured hourglasses
of life’s sandy moments.)
He saw me laughing
just on the other side
of what was once a bridge arching over
the vein of the river which has now
boiled into a desert.
Fossils of past actions
scattered in the dried
crevasses of a foolish passage,
reminding the laughter
of evaporating tears.
The souls stand alone on
a once fluid shore,
two sides face each other,
love four feet deep in stone;
elephant bones erect as pedestals
like stalemate chess pieces,
solitary pilings, or a
trunk-less support;
a gate-less graveyard of history remains.
He saw me laughing and she
did not know
our bridge was once a gateway
between each others homes.