Praise the good-tempered summer <br />and the red cardinal <br />that jumps <br />like a hot coal off the track. <br />Praise the heavy leaves, <br />heroines of green, frosted <br />with silver. Praise the litter <br />of torn paper, mulch <br />and sticks, the spiny holly, <br />its scarlet land mines. <br /> <br />Praise the black snake that whips <br />and shudders its way across my path <br />and the lane where grandmother <br />and grandfather walked, arms <br />around each other's waists <br />next to such a river, below <br />a blue bridge about to be <br />crossed by a train. <br /> <br />In the last gasp <br />of August, they erase the time <br />it might be now, whispering <br />into the darkness that passed, <br />blue plumes of smoke and cicada, <br />eager and doomed. <br /> <br /> <br />Submitted by Nola Garrett<br /><br />Geraldine Connolly<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/blue-bridge/
