Faith
Sometimes a plank
..... in the bridge
.......... gives way
though the beams are strong
and the structure sure,
for the span was tied quite long ago
and Time undoes the things
man touches most…
And so it seems that just when all feels
save and sound—
..... a plank
.......... gives way..
and we who tread
are frozen fast with fear…

‘till Time (which touches not the soul)
and Eternity (which does)
..... gives Faith
.......... to cross again.
© Copyright October, 1995

“The Swinging Bridge” in Croswell, Michigan, is a suspended footbridge that spans the Black River. (Click on photos to enlarge.)

We used to play on this bridge whenever we visited my Uncle Neal and Aunt Jackie and their boys. It ‘s over 200 feet long and has been there for over 100 years. Its name comes from how it sags and sways in the jostling undulations of its traffic. We’d sometimes stop in the middle as others passed, we’d hold tight to the cable, bobbing like clothes pins on an empty line. It was enormous fun.

One spring, however, I bounded down the wooden swag, heard a dull crack under my foot, and clenched the side cable as I stumbled to a halt. One of the 2-by-8 planks had broken around a knot and was dangling by the lower cables at each end. The river was only about ten feet below, but to me it was like a scene from a movie where a rickety bridge made of vines spans a chasm, and I was too frightened to take another step.

Everyone on the bridge stood still in empathy except my father who stepped toward me, stretched out his hand and said, “It’s all right, Tom. We’ll just step over it.” I held my breath and slowly continued up the other side. The further we were from the low point, the sillier it all seemed. We laughed as we stepped past the moorings and descended down the steps to solid ground, but the bridge was unusually quiet the rest of the day.

What brought these lines to paper thirty years later was another kind of fear.

They say deaths come in threes, and in 1995, my father passed away in April, my wife’s grandfather (who had lived with her parents for many years) died in August, and then in October Julie’s father had a severe heart attack and after surgery remained comatose for three days. We truly did not know if he would pull through, and on the most uncertain day, that feeling of the broken plank on the bridge rushed over me again. I sat on the edge of a bed in a guest room, as we were getting ready to return to the hospital, and felt momentarily "frozen fast with fear." I did not think of these lines in past tenst because they had not yet been written. I only remembered the feeling of clinging to the cables of that bridge until my father came to help me cross again. The image and the feeling prompted the lines shortly afterwards, and that is how meaning and metaphor meld into verse. This may make no sense to all readers, but for those who understand, I share such thoughts.

***************

(By the way, my father-in-law fully recovered and continues pastoring his church to this day. The sign over the bridge says "Be Good To Your Mother-in-Law" and that has never been a problem. She and "Dad" have been second parents to me for over 30 years.)

Note: The full meaning of the poem relies on the dual meaning of the word "plank," the word "cross," and on an understanding of what span was tied quite long ago.