Sometimes before I wake I see

an iron bridge reaching across a clear

line of tracks, a bridge that begins in blisters

and rust and arches away

into morning. Then I’m walking across

its sharp rails, and I feel it in the small

of my feet, feel it like any inhuman thing

with a beginning and end and no middle.

Or it could be this bridge, half-drowned

in the Susquehanna, half dead in the yellow water

and its pilings furred by moss. Then on the other

side, the devil bridge of Bagni di Lucca,

convulsing like an ingot in the blast

of a furnace before it lands belly-up

and steaming. Beyond that the false happiness

of the bridge to Camden or the six boards

nailed across the cow pasture’s creek.

Downstream, the bridge I can’t remember

like pairs of wings lifting over Mexico.

There always comes a point when I’m tired

of other sides and remember there was only 

one bridge after all: the one by the olive oil plant

in Somerville, Massachusetts.

It made a strange music in the wind,

though I never crossed it in the morning

or in the evening, either.