"Beyond the Bridge" by David Pring-Mill, Frequent Contributor

Beyond the Bridge

David Pring-Mill

The grander the bridge,

Capilano Suspension Bridge Near Vancouver, British Columbia

the smaller seem those people

who are passing.

But there is greatness

in our shores, connected.

Lions roar, like

security guards

of cast concrete,

With Stanley's trees

positioning themselves

like an army, waiting

for the people to go away,

in their ships of passengers

and tragic pulp.

Waiting, to regain the land,

To infiltrate

with lurking seeds and cones.

They stand a damp, dark regiment,

where cedar poles and slabs once structured 

A different kind

of less demanding people.

We

Roar right back at the lions,

with our car windows rolled down.

The air is rushing in,

which is good;

someone once told me

that God can only hear you

when no one else can.

We shout out, "What is life?"

And then we laugh and know.

When I am alone I walk among

the condo towers,

made of glass,

all bluish-green,

futuristic,

in some fragile way.

But enough of that,

I leave it all!

To hell with it!

It does not take long

to return to wilderness,

from here.

Birds nest in hawthorn thickets,

White flowers and blackish fruits

grow and wither.

Bark is scaly and thin.

Little fruits are tart,

then brown and soft

after a frost.

In autumn,

the bright-red and orange

of a Douglas maple

allows the forest to play

with the fire color

it dreads.

What is natural, anyway?

Isn't love supposed to be

some combination of art and biology?

We chase and try to catch

the ephemeral what-ness

of Watts:

smoky riots and warped wire mesh,

Towering into ceramic tiled, sea shelled, gathered beauty.

We are destructive and inventive, always.

Make the most

of your garbage, they say.

I look and see

an owl perched on a slumping black wire,

so still until the moments

when he twists his head around

like some ungodly thing.

I analyze my surroundings, because

Science is a way of studying

the mechanics of God:

an engine sputtering

through smoky mouths and minds.

Headed north now, spirits lightheaded, exhausted,

I somehow figure it all out and cook

and am glad I brought this little lighter.

To maintain with snails and everything,

thrown onto fire and all, it's taxing

This way we strive for happiness and

Forget its body.

I tell the river of my restaurant.

There is fire for fish,

We serve fire to fish.

Is this me now, or for forever?

If Confucius had taught confusion

We would all be his disciples,

with most recruited by Love.

There is no such thing as calm.

There is no such thing as stillness.

We are all turning,

and we move on top of the movement.

I don't know.

I leave and twenty hours later

I head back into the city.

Is downtown stacked spaces,

Or an attempt to be like the trees?

Sometimes, a rock is a rock

is a thought.

Ideas are natural objects

and we sort of stumble into them.

And if you listen,

closely,

there are layers in the sound where our souls

must vibrate to an unknown chord.

I can close my eyes out here

And be with you…

I touch the wild ways of you

And know those open sounds of you

The broken-boned

displays you do.

And gentle as your eyes once were

These 

noises

are

our ways of words,

But we're not saying anything.

Sometimes I wonder

If it would have been better if nothing had learned to speak,

If we could not communicate with one another,

If we could only see and sense and feel,

never able to confirm

what something else felt…

But knowing and sensing,

we would be trapped

as some empathetic animal

with a vision of things

flashing before our eyes

and our mouths

would only know consumption,

and kisses.

Our society

damaged that instrumentation,

and this is the electric neglect! I say,

and they say:

this IV will rehydrate you.

Poet's Notes:  "Beyond the Bridge" is set in British Columbia. The poem owes a significant and obvious debt to Henry David Thoreau.

Editor's Note:  Thoreau, for sure, but I hear echoes of Whitman also.  Regardless, this poem is pure Pring-Mill.