Barbed wire snags like briars when <br />fence posts rot in goldenrod, <br />the cows are gone, the cowpath <br />a thinning along the creek <br />to follow upstream until <br />water narrows, gray planks lean <br />over the flow like a book <br />open but left unfinished, <br />like this bridge was when the man <br />who started it took to his <br />death-bed, watched from there a son <br />drive the last nails, drive the truck <br />across so he might die less <br />burdened that night. The farmhouse <br />is razed now, the barn and shed <br />bare quilts of ground. All that's left <br />some fallen-down four by fours, <br />a few rusty nails, this bridge <br />the quick or the dead can't cross.<br /><br />Ron Rash<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-bridge-3/
