The Bridge amidst Autumn's blossoms
A board counting digits down
As Redemption falls soft from silk skies
Waiting for the steel hearts to cross
And plunge into the chuckling cheeky waters.
The Bridge, so old
Once home to lovers and leapers and cyclists
Affixed with wires and semtex
The last blow against the inevitable
The demolition of dreams and delusions.
II
Discretion is valour to itself.
Spiralling down in a burning tinderbox
I pulled the covers back and jumped
Floating above the tulip fields
In the cool summer breeze
Peace.
The explosion in the distance
A machine that brought joy and ruin
Riddled too much to keep afloat
The grey clad men gathering below
Pulled helpless by wandering drafts
The feeling of the hard ground
The sense of finality in surrender
The twisted metal that was once a Bridge
Making the best of a bad situation.
III
When the firestorm dies
The prisons freed, bridge rebuilt
The graves grow tulips.
I wrote this as three different poems in one, the last being a Haiku. The imagery is inspired by Operation Market-Garden, the failed 1944 Allied attempt to caputre bridges in the Netherlands and use them to quickly end the war, immortalized in the film A Bridge Too Far. Paratroopers would hold them for ground forces to sweep through into Germany, and German forces often blew the bridges up to buy time.
The first was written listening to Don't Go Dark by Bleachers, the second to Don't Worry Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin, and the third was written to a bunch of Bleachers songs. The entire trilogy is obviously inspired by Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel.
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