Sunday, April 11, 2010

Pictures of The Long Bien Bridge






If I thought about him much,

I'd have wondered if he was alive.

I thought for sure he would end up

at the bottom of some bridge,

having jumped off, or maybe asleep in a box.

He was a friend among other friends,

but the part that I saw

of myself in him, was drowning.

He was wilder, and more dangerous,

and that is saying a lot.

When he left he wasn't turning

from the razor's edge, he was cutting

his way across, one bloody step at a time

like it was the last bridge on earth

across the dark river.

It is strange the currents we choose

and the places we are taken,

thinking we are swept away

in rough tidewater,

unable to swim

or navigate the deluge.

Maybe sometimes we know,

deeply from the mud and the silt,

that the floodplain can scrub

the surface that refuses

to be anything but intolerable.

We were just hoping to come up

someplace for air.

Last night he came up

in a conversation

across The Long Bien Bridge.

He has a new life on dry land,

anchored in the floodplains of Hanoi.

I saw his photographs and I knew.


~ for an old friend who built a fantastic life on the floodplain.


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