I Have Crossed the Broken Bridges

And listened to the wild animal

screams in the middle of the night

the screams that quieted the mating bull frog’s roar,

on summer afternoons, I have driven

an Opel GT too fast for conditions

 as a young and foolish driver,

though we survived it all.

The road has been closed for decades,

but in my mind, we still go there

and listen to the frogs and smell the swamp water.

We waded across beaver damns,

we climbed on undiscovered Indian mounds,

and climbed on the rocks below the dam,’

and walked down railroad tracks

and swatted at mosquitoes and horseflies,

and were glad to be alive.

And today, we are still glad to be alive,

though old, though so many places

we lived through, and in, are gone

or closed or never really were,

but we are still alive

and still glad to be alive.