My older cousin led me
down the capillary
trail through brambles thick
as summer. Vines arced and stammered
in the breeze. One dangled, cut
to swing above a creek,
the papery twine worn off
where hands and legs had clung;
That day we hurried past it
until the ground rolled off
at the lip of a ravine.
On boards a yard wide bound
with rope, we walked among
the tops of sycamores
and maples, my every step
a careful probing. Leaves
rustled all around us.
Or was it the creek below?
About halfway, he started
jumping, lightly at first
(I forced a smile). Then: “Hold on.”
Waves barreled at our feet
so I could barely stand.
He laughed, I screamed, but the bridge
was new and strong. I watched—
when he tired and the world
went right again—the red
come back to my unclenched
and trembling hands that burned
and held a moment the pattern
of the braid, like a trace fossil
printed in the shale
at the bottom of the gorge.
Sometimes I find myself
down that thin path again,
not knowing where I am
until I walk out barefoot
on the sanded planks that give
beneath me as the cords
go taut and hold and all
together it responds:
the sturdy creak of wood
on rope, the vertebral platform
rising with the swell,
almost, of breath inside
a ribcage. The bridge lolls
in the leaf-bathed gap. And I
lie down and fall asleep.
—
Will Toedtman lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is the author of The Several World, winner of the Wick Poetry Chapbook Prize. His poems have also appeared in Able Muse, The Hopkins Review, Literary Matters, and elsewhere.
