Ivan Head: Flowers on the Bridge

Flowers on the Bridge

St Joseph Cupertino pray for us

At speed on the motorway

I see with flickering eye,

the flower-bunch tied to the bridge rail;

and see it properly for the first time,

where the road crosses the canyon of river-through-sandstone:

far below.

But because there’s no pedestrian path on it

I used to think some kind of car crash happened here;

until I twig that beyond the flowers

the drop is of such immediate depth that it had become

one of those subtle black doors

that edge the field of vision; a door without depth

which as apophatic billboard of promise

beckoned with promises of comfort and sadness:

that someone had walked out along the road

to that point, perhaps in the soft black of night

and having figured it out,

thought that they might fly upwards into light.

Ivan Head