Cribstone Bridge, Bailey Island Maine

The bridge to the island

of my childhood enchantment

is fashioned of stone’s repose.

Without mortar or cable,

concrete or steel,

without any artless distress,

it holds open its course,

its singular way,

each quarried slab in its place:

granite laid on granite

laid on bedrock and ledge,

a rhythm of chambered space.

On his book’s first page

Augustine sighed,

O Lord our hearts are restless

until they rest in You.

As the stones of the bridge rest

like the words of a poem

while the tides flow freely through.

Outskirts

District of day’s emptiness,

of nettles and diesel smoke,

stray billboards

and bored pigeons,

of desultory cats crossing vacant lots

like the lonely old

who no longer believe

the legends of themselves.