It is false that a bridge has exactly two points of contact with the world,
one precisely here, and one at a specific there.
At least, it is false of this bridge. The rusted girders
hold an aging bridge firmly to my island. So that makes one point of contact.
Clear, certain, unequivocal. Litter blows against that point. The detritus of
somewhere. Old newspapers discolored with soot. I can't decipher the writing,
even what language it might have been written in. Tin cans, jagged-edged,
float across the sludgy water and pile against the girders.
One point, yes, but the other? I do not see another, across the smog.
The bridge is lost in a soup of foghorns and shadow. If I stayed here,
I might believe that it has one other point, one ending, as logic would have it.
Or I might believe it has none, that somewhere in that blind distance the bridge ceases.
But I have attempted to cross, and I know. I know that its other ends are limitless.
The points of contact are infinite.
And each as empty as this--this barren strip of an island, concrete and mud with
dry grasses taking tenuous root between the cracks.
Yet I try again. My footsteps on the riveted grating of the bridge are metallic,
but the echoes die away in the smothering fog. Cotton swathed stillness.
I drag my feet forward. The handrail is a wire cable, slack between posts.
A wind tries to push the cable away, but its weight is too much. I pull myself along.