Bright Angel Park

Two strangers on that pebble beach under the swinging bridge
as trains departed and arrived, while the sun hid sinking behind
clouds, with birds talking to each other, to us, their mates...
we lounged watching silence flow between darkening trees and
circles on the surface making their announcements,

slowly first like a kiss then faster, each circle a target, and not
hearing the "All Aboard" or realizing the beginning of movement until
drops began reaching under my collar and overflowing your brow, no
desire for escape from this platform of ice cream, cake, glasses of
wine, candles, and the points of trees reaching toward dripping skies.

This flowing silent stream of twenty three years, one man enough, no
time for marriage, Russian, did you speak it, the Mongolian in China,
mother, sister, brother, father, daughters, rings on fingers,
the too deep male/female dynamic, ages, times, my feelings... your
thoughts... renovations, or was it your feelings and my thoughts.

Tracks extending from a rushing red machine dispatching timely
trains slowly beginning another journey, carrying baggage and
passengers, emotions and actions, then swaying like that bridge
down a line of steel laid by scattered crews - solid, gradual,
straight, curved, dark, hard, and firmly bedded ever leading
on and on and on -

while in our soaking jeans we wait not yet wet enough at
that empty bank, keeping dry the pebbles beneath us, still
some wine in our cups until one stranger asks,
"Will you ride with me?"

~ by Rojan Zét