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poem by Stephanie Lenox
Suspension Bridge of Disbelief
No one knows what’s down there.
We hear the water
but cannot see it.
Under the bridge, steel
columns disappear
into fog. The lonely cry
of boats weeps upward.
No one knows
who built the bridge
or how it was engineered
to stand year by year.
Even the boatmen, who tell us stories
of what they’ve seen
(rocks honed by water
to needles, fish
the size of the moon)
cannot explain it.
And if they could, no one
would believe them.
They wring their dirty hats
with pale, weather-hardened hands.
Lies hover about their heads
like seagulls. They say
if a man fell from the bridge
he would not die
from the fall
but that falling his heart
would split,
an overripe tomato,
either from fear or
more likely
from the inexpressible joy
of what he finally saw.
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First published, Atlanta Review
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