by Stephen Beal
I suspect when I tell them of my marriage, most of my friends will look away, uncertain what to say.
Some will be embarrassed, some will be nonplussed.
Others will laugh aloud, shaking their heads as they stroll to the family room to check the football game.
Some friends may even understand, or want to think they do,
but I'm afraid, if I smile too much when I tell them I have married Brooklyn Bridge,
or if I get really heartfelt, not weeping but with voice choking up,
if I do that, I'm afraid, my friends will decide that I have gone too far.
This poetry thing, they will say, has taken over.
Hey! they will say, considering the vegetarian thing, you look like you could use a steak.
Those who mistrust the sober thing may even suggest a martini.
Look. Okay. All right.
All right, Peter and Bob and Phil and John, guys I went to college with, guys who could say about
this marriage of mine, Oh no, not again. Not still. He's not still playing the fool.
I tell you, guys, I did not decide of a morning, Gosh! I've got to marry Brooklyn Bridge.
I did not make a plan. I did not set a goal.
Rather, the idea grew,
from a remark in a letter to a friend,
from a poem that followed,
from the sense as I flew east from Chicago to spend Christmas in Manhattan— the sense that I would like to marry the bridge,
that I would like to have that spiritual force always in my life.
I tell you, you walk out on the bridge,
where you are absolutely safe, with the cars on the roadway down below, on either side,
where you are never fearful,
where you never have any sense of edges, never any sense of non-support, no swaying,
where even the air feels textured with delight.
Oh, you walk out here and you are beautiful. You are rich and famous.
You are one with the glories of the world about you, Brooklyn Heights and
New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty and the towers of Manhattan.
You are one with all this beingness, and you are utterly free.
You are dancing in the air. You feel like you are flying.
You are joy.
Toward noon on Christmas Eve I walk out on the bridge from Manhattan,
and when I am fully on the bridge, the Manhattan tower behind me, the Brooklyn tower before,
when I am held by the strength of the bridge and swept by all that is around me, the skyscape and
the seascape and the landscape and the almost tangible air, when I am fully there,
I start to plight my troth.
I promise always to honor the bridge, always to praise the bridge, always to value the bridge —
in sum, I promise always to love the bridge —
and as I am thinking I should walk to the middle, should stand at the absolute center of the bridge
to plight my troth, to be one with Manhattan, one with Brooklyn, one with the bridge's yin and yang,
a young woman in jogger's tights falls to her knees, embracing the waist of a young man.
He bends to kiss her as he helps her rise,
and as they run off toward Manhattan she throws out her arms and cries,
He's going to marry me!
Oh, my friends. The bridge says yes.
The next day, Christmas, I walk across the bridge for brunch with friends,
and as I head down toward Brooklyn, there's a handkerchief on the planks.
Spanking clean, freshly ironed, white and blue.
There's no one else around, no one to call to, Excuse me, you dropped your handkerchief.
The white cloth is bordered with six blue woven lines that intersect at the corners.
Yes. A little like the cables on the bridge.
The handkerchief looks like a man's but it's a woman's size.
It is old but well-maintained, a treasured piece of cloth.
Turning back to the towers, I thank the bridge for my gift.
On Wednesday I walk across the bridge from Manhattan, then turn at the Brooklyn tower to come back.
Gadzooks! A knothole! A knothole slanting through a plank!
Kneeling on the bridge, this latter-day Archimedes applies an eyeball to the knothole.
Butt in air, in blue jeans and navy duffel coat, long red scarf trailing on the planks,
head in red wool cap pressed to the wood,
I peer through the knothole and see:
water.
What do you see through a bridge?
That which the bridge is designed to cross.
In the case of Brooklyn Bridge you see:
the East River.
I laugh.
I laugh at the folly of my science.
I can not stop laughing.
I twist and turn and wipe my eyes and blow my nose and laugh all over again.
When people pass, I have to turn away toward upper Manhattan, hand against my mouth.
From Brooklyn Bridge I have discovered the East River.
I am one with the explorers, one with the engineers,
one with the mighty questers of time.
I'm sure the spirits of the bridge are laughing, too.
Up and down the bridge there are tumults of joy.
Oh, bridge. Dear bridge.
My mate.
My pal.
©1999 Stephen Beal
325 Harrison Avenue Loveland CO 80537 smbeal@frii.com 970 663 7647Getting Hitched (and another Bridge poem) appear in Stephen's new collection, Suddenly Speaking Babylonian, available at Amazon.com
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17 January 2001