Fern Hollow Bridge
The high bridge carries a roadway out of town,
an earlier generation’s pride and wonder,
emblem of man’s ambition. From below
on the park path, it’s an iron rainbow,
a sky that booms with ungiving thunder
above a shallow stream that gave no grace
to the promising son who did himself to death
choosing to break himself on the dusty path.
Above, the walker along the red-painted rail,
pausing, has distance and time to see
the ordained net,
the thick unconscious trees.
Walking across an ancient bridge in Spain
midway I saw a saint, feet hidden in wax.
On the bridge between us can we build such a shrine
to consecrate a place where I flinch to look down?
and on this bare span conjure a blessed shape,
a braided cord to be lit by journeyers?
Mourner, comforter; relict—offer thanks
for the sad iron we walk over the gap.
Poet’s Note—
This poem appears in my book, City Bird (Ragged Sky, 2016). I drove over that bridge many times, sometimes to see my late friend Mary Riley, a poet who lived in Wilkinsburg: mourner, comforter, relict. I walked over it, too, as many people in the area did. But how many people knew before it collapsed catastrophically in January, 2022 that it was called “Fern Hollow Bridge”? I didn’t; in the book I called it “Forbes Avenue Bridge,” which probably describes 20 bridges at least. Drivers took no notice of it, but walkers—over it or under it—could see and hear its drama.
Arlene Weiner is a member of Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange and Squirrel Hill Poetry Workshop. Her poems have appeared in the Paterson Literary Review, Pleiades, and Poet Lore, have been anthologized, and have been heard on The Writer’s Almanac. Ragged Sky Press published two collections of her poems, Escape Velocity (2006) and City Bird (2016). Arlene was awarded a residence at the MacDowell Colony. She also writes plays.
