Terminal Island Bridge by Beth Stevens We exit the toll booth into gray-wool nothingness, as fog slow dances behind us tattering the highway, draping the old prison walls in disillusioned grace. Tires thump to the bridge's rhythm: our bodies sway in unison while our thoughts exist outside of time... on the radio the same blues we've riffed on before, till a foghorn drowns out romance. Light shivers: the bridge jumps off into uncertainty like a double suicide ~ yet here we go again, in a dark sedan rippling the velvet abyss for one more crossing. gulls    late in the day circling and crying over a deserted pier ~ the dour fishermen and the peanut vendors have gone home what little there is to eat now must come struggling and cold from the ocean ~ time to alight on a weathered piling and watch the night begin. © 1998, 1977 by Beth Stevens More Poems Songs Fiction Back to Index