I created this blog as a place for my dear friend Ellen and I to share our poems with each other.
Here's one to get us started.
Reflections on the Jefferson Avenue Footbridge
I recall a day so perfect and crystalline
Nostalgia in the current moment for the current moment washed through me even then.
Two shining and perfect little sons by my side,
And I as blissfully ignorant of my own shining perfection
As I was of the many shadows and trials to come.
Cavorting through the sun-washed crowd of some local festival, we discovered it,
Relic of the gilded age, wrought iron and wood and steel cable,
Ridiculous and beautiful in its excess - a footbridge over railroad tracks.
Laughing and running up the stairs of that bridge, one shining perfect son and I,
Just for the joy of throwing peanuts at the trains roaring by
So close, so close, so close they seemed as they approached
It seemed each one surely would smash us and bridge and peanuts all together.
One shining perfect son, too cautious and sensible, clinging to the rail at the base of the stairs
Solemnly awaiting our return to him and our senses.
I used to think that bridge was built for utilitarian need,
To aid the folks north of the tracks to the stores and jobs to the south.
When I read that it was built for the joy of people who like to watch trains
I smiled, and remembered being nostalgic for nostalgia of that moment of discovery.
