The buttresses of morning lift the sun

Across an arc of steel and flying piers.

The twin cadenzas of the cables run

Like landless gulls across the hemispheres.

Out of a step of mist the caisson root

Spires from the consonant rock to the vowel of sky,

The highway rings the morning underfoot

Scoring the traffic for a symphony.

And arc and piers and highway soar from steel

Into a swinging web of flying sound.

A gull’s geometry, a flashing keel,

A flowering ceremony of the ground.

The men who climbed like birds to trap that wire,

Like birds were born to know what song and flight meant:

The tempo of an arc, curve of a choir,

The eye’s adagio and the blood’s excitement.