All the Bridge We Imagine

As we cross the bridge from New
Hampshire to Maine it elongates.
The river broadens and overflows,
the green steel arch span lengthened
by many welded sections
abutted crudely end to end
as if someone were constructing
as fast as we drive across it.

Last night you astonished me
with the poise of a mermaid,
the rhetoric of a seventeenth
century puritan minister.
You rattled the crowd by comparing
contemporary Russian to fiefdoms
of tenth-century Germany.
You pronounced the rich Slavic names
with a verve that made me envy
the professors who instructed you
in languages I’ve never heard of

except as rumors on late-night
radio talk shows. Concluding
the evening, you spiked a map
of the Caucasus with red markings,
predicting assassinations sure
to trigger a third world war.
The crowd loved you. Framed by worlds
the rest of us didn’t understand
you glowed in pale fluorescent light,
yet looked modest as a truffle.

Now as we drive north in sunlight
too big to tell lies the bridge
has distorted, the river broadened
to claim us for itself. Traffic howls
while we move more and more slowly,
prolonging impossible distance
as the river brims over, mocking
all the bridge we imagine, and more.
Mushrooms and Orchids

When I joke about your obsession
with mushrooms and orchids you gaze
with inhuman flicker candid
as a reptile’s. The Sunday light
refracted by your smile hurts
the churchgoing crowd you despise,
and like me they regard you
from the corners of their eyes as if
afraid some curse will apply.
Some claim you sleep under toadstools.
Some even whisper that the pink
of the lady slipper tempts you
to a devilish sort of excess.
Yet you’re harmless as the flora
you admire, excepting the toxic
amanita, the flesh of which
is tough and white as your thighs.

By William Doreski

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