Poetry by Ruth Towne

Decal­co­ma­nia with River and Bridge

This poem was first pub­lished by redrosethorns journal in April 2024. It appears in Res­ur­rec­tion of the Man­nequins (Kelsay Books, 2025).

Over the railing of the bridge

below me but not so far, a river

dis­in­te­grates, it comes to an end

of sorts, it throws itself over,

over, into the ravine of serrate rocks,

irreg­u­lar teeth at the river’s mouth.

Once, my husband demonstrates

how little it takes as we visit.

We stand togeth­er at the edge

looking below. I am warm in summer sun.

Vapor takes shape in the air after a storm.

I listen as he explains, I am still as water,

tran­quil, as if on each of my daily visits

as I walk the road beside this river

I don’t con­sid­er going over,

which he doesn’t know.

Water releas­es water as drops,

body releas­es body as thought—

misting up, sinking down, in the air,

on the rocks. Water, body separate,

are sep­a­rate, come togeth­er again. 

I have won­dered over this edge

of water times before. Once, I am five

inside the glossy shell of a green canoe

when I ride over inside my mind.

I try to stop then. A hor­i­zon­tal board

out of view makes that water’s edge,

a bound­ary some­where under the water

for the water’s surface to sublimate,

to sup­press. Bless the board, it holds me

from going over, however invisibly.

Here, the rail is thigh-high, perpendicular,

green as liberty, as the old canoe I keep

in my mind. All this—the bridge, the river

below the bridge, the cliff below the river

—all this waits for me. All this passes

a vacant mill graying, deteriorating.

That build­ing lists toward water’s edge.

It does not remem­ber what it was like

when its tur­bines first turned. But the river

remem­bers how it surged before the dam.

I am behind the rail at the bridge’s edge.

As is its habit, the bridge keeps practiced

in the air. As is my ten­den­cy, I visit here

to look at the river decom­pos­ing below.

So this is how I see myself go over:

first the bridge rail, head heavy, thoughtless

then thoughts lost in the air. In the air—

I hang there as long as possible,

sus­pend­ed, pendant and pendent.

Since the bridge is not so high,

there is hardly time for me

to digress, to wonder between edge

of bridge and edge of water at the quiet

while the river lulls by, a music box

unwind­ing in dead air. For an instant

I am below the river below the bridge

as water catches me. It deadens

my fall. Then I float again, face to the base

of the bridge, flat on my back, in the black

and turbid current, feeling first

since I hanged there in the air

the changed way my body makes sense

of the water, how I can sense more

than tem­per­a­ture and pres­sure there,

how my body does not guess at sensation.

I feel what someone always ought to feel,

what the water ought to feel like now,

how water always was without me.

So afloat and knowing what going over

is like, then I could find the river’s edge

and climb out of the water,

and back to my senses again,

or maybe

I could stay float­ing almost over,

or not.

Of course, there are other bridges to go

over. I am ten when I come to know

a strange chain-weight­ed bridge

by its name, Memo­r­i­al. Before this,

I name each bridge by its unique

feature or shape: Pillar, Mill, Metal Grate,

Four-Square, and Dinosaur, that high

and ancient frame scaled patina-green

and tow­er­ing over the river-harbor’s mouth.

Then, at sev­en­teen, I am driving over

that dinosaur, when I consider

pure dis­tance—

White Moun­tains bound­ing the west,

Atlantic con­strain­ing the east,

all that water and air beneath me,

and I think to myself, Hold tight. Hold tight.

Here, not far off from bridge and river,

maples and pine trees cling to the riverside

as the river erodes rocks and boulders

left­over from ancient glaciers.

This land­scape lives while I do.

It changes. It decays.

I have carried the image of the river

and the bridge with me all my life.

And I remem­ber what it is like

with my father behind me

in the green canoe at the edge,

how surely the current will take us away,

how despite my crying he goes forward

press­ing his oar toward the empty place

where the water falls

because it cannot go.

He keeps rowing.

Bless him, he keeps rowing.

Below me, the river deteriorates

the day my husband demon­strates going

where the bridge rail splits,

where the two sides of the bridge seam.

He slides easily, rain­wa­ter in a stream

between those pillars. He holds himself over

for an instant. And he con­sid­ers it,

the plunge under into wet leaves and rotten

water­logged branch­es in silt and mud.

When he returns from his odyssey

between the beams, he explains to me

what held him inside,

this expan­sion joint, a design

for the bridge to breathe.

Then he points below the other side

of the rail. He shows me the concrete

pillar of the bridge to which he swims,

his point of return in the current.

It’s my turn, so I point to a tiny horizon,

where the water falls

over the dam’s wood ledge,

where beside, a ladder rises

at the last moment

as I am back to the bridge

and the river, eye to the mist

as it rises up, sunk close to under

the water as it throws itself over,

where I am so close to going.

Bless it. Bless this river. Bless this bridge.

Bless this way of living as I go.