Northern Avenue Bridge

The Northern Avenue Bridge closed

years ago to motor traffic.

Pedestrians still cross unless

the red light blinks and the swing

span opens for water craft

on Fort Point Channel. Rusty

steelwork casts elaborate shadows

on the weed-trimmed deck. I pause

at the west end and note the swing

span open although no boats appear.

The channel looks deep enough

to float a cruise ship. If I dropped

from here I’d sink so far the flesh

would peel from the bone before

I ever touched bottom. Long ago,

bicycling over this bridge, I saw

two kids diving into the dark,

splashing like seals, laughing off

the threat of drowning and shouts

of the bridge-keeper whose shack

still clung to one abutment

reached by a long wooden stair.

That shack collapsed in a storm

at least forty years ago

and lingered as a ruin for two

more decades before slipping

forever into the dark. The shadows

cast by the girders look strong

enough to support real traffic

again, but the city engineers

in their finite wisdom declared

the weight-bearing impossible,

and for a long time considered

the swing span inoperable

and so propped it open for good.

Now it works again but only

for sloggers like me who prefer

their city travel slow and certain,

and who like to tempt ourselves

by crossing unsure dimensions

with all of our senses tingling

as shadow and light intersect.

Seta’s Cafe

In Seta’s café on Belmont Street

the menus scorch our hands. Arriving

by trolley bus in a blue

shower of sparks, we left

our fellow passengers tired

of the grunt and grind of crawling

from Harvard Square to the suburbs—

the gaunt rumple of Mount Auburn

pimpled with thousands of headstones

grimacing as we passed. We order

mezze to munch while we talk.

Hummus, metch, yalanchi, stuffed

cabbage washed down with espresso

and trimmed with slabs of za’atar.

We should never leave this warmth

and street view, should recuse

or refine our lifelong quarrel

so we can work in the kitchen

together, washing dishes, chopping

vegetables, sleeping on the floor

after hours when the buses

have parked behind chain-link fence

and the commuters snore all spooned

against each other. You fear me,

though, fear my agnostic silence,

my subtle readings of Emerson,

my lust for expensive power tools,

my disbelief in photographs,

my nostalgia for the whiskey death

Dylan Thomas so deeply enjoyed.

The café hums with pride in itself.

The plate glass windows shiver

as another bus passes. Cups

and saucers rattle. Other patrons

grow intimate with each other,

but we lean back and order

spinach and cheese turnovers

to anchor us to conversation

shaped by duty rather than love.