"All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books."
-Thomas Carlyle

by Daniel Morgan

This neck of woods that lies along
Those snow-kneed trees to the granite top,
That stands the rain from year to year,
Is witnessing the green new growth
And muddy flow of swept-up earth.
An hour beside the sodden spring,
I walked as far as Frank's Goodbye,
A fancy name for nothing but
A forest fork with two dead-ends.
Yet here upon the fresh threshold
I met a spectral bridge and paused.

The sky stretched open like an old knapsack
And this land I've known for miles on end,
But this greenhorn did not fit in.
Beneath the timber arch-tossed frame
A bare arroyo dozed asleep.
I hesitated to announce
Myself a stranger, here, aloud.
We talked awhile about the weather,
Though this bridge had all a migrant's charm.

Circled by the crossroad's sign,
The footpath I had walked so long
Got lost among our vague run-on,
Perhaps to find why Francis left.
Afforded thus together there,
I asked across the silent space,
As he lay stitched across the stream,
If the chasm was completed
Or if it took more stone to couple
Divisions that have gone too far.

Later when I regained my way
And missed the ghost I met that day,
I never stopped my thoughts of what
Laid like a wound that would not heal
And wondered how one calls a stream.

I thought it cruel a bridge would reach
Where water has not run for years.