Crossing Rivers - (At the edge of the Delaware River where an aging foundation sits waiting for its bridge)

On a shady day in March
I see the browns of fall across the river
and all along the water’s edge
the ripple splash of time
draws me from my moorings
I think of the way water makes room
for falling bodies
And over the bridge of time
I remember a fall I took
through breaking ice
on a wintry pond in a husky grey late afternoon
of childhood
Thunder and rumble came first
and oddly, I heard it through my legs
as they braced for the fall
of the icy floor that held me
And in the cracking
whole continents broke off
one from another
I can still see the tilt and edge
of the crust of my thin globe
And I marvel now, as I marveled then
at the thinness of the solid world below me
In a charmed exalted rush of fear and lightness
I stepped from one broken icecap to another
as if I were stepping over dreams
each one breaking off into pieces of this mosaic earth
In icy clarity
I saw the thinness of our lives
each moment of breath the world holds the world breaks
And now at the foot of this dormant dream of a bridge
spanning the watery uncertainty of fog, flood and ice
I see that every step is a leap of fear and faith
a vague and dreamlike notion

that crossing rivers is more miracle than act
that all along this water’s edge
bridges are waiting to be born
and all the bridges I’ve crossed
have been bridges of dreams
bridges of love
bridges of trust
and crossing this river is hard as fear, hard as ice
yet easy as falling through water
as easy as waking into a dream

*****

Poem by,

James P. Kain
JKAIN@neumann.edu

Along the Delaware River, just outside Easton, PA

Photo by, Tom Johnson-Medland