The Bridge
Once there was a bridge I couldn’t cross.
Cusp of summer. Sound of insects
carried with me, from Melville’s fields
in my-heart-on-the-bridge, their zzzz.
Year’s end, now. A theory of edges. A vow
to complete certain tasks—they will not
improve me, but dissipate, burn off
like vapor. I’ve already been too good.
I thought keys would fly out of my pocket
and then I would have to fly after,
to enter the terrifying room
where things blow away to.
Scraps of lists, a paper flower,
the raspberry clouds of the day’s
attenuation. A series of signs said
help was there, but not for me.
Copyright © 2025 by Elisa Gabbert. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 21, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
“A bridge is an all-time great occasion for a poem, with its many vectors for thinking: massive human structure in a natural environment; scale in several dimensions; passage and precipice; hope [and] the sublime. It’s a hyper-poetic object. The real bridge of this poem is in Upstate New York. I drove across it one way and then tried, and failed, to cross back on foot. I’m interested here in the difference between the fear as felt in the moment and the fear remembered, as well as the two bridges—the bridge via car and the bridge from my own naked personhood.”
—Elisa Gabbert
Elisa Gabbert
Elisa Gabbert is an essayist and the author of four poetry collections including, Normal Distance (Soft Skull Press, 2022) and L'Heure Bleue Or The Judy Poems (Black Ocean, 2016).