The Bridge

It was a place

Of refuge from the wilds

Of weather: sleet,

Sweaty summer heat,

Storms at home.

Unspectacular,

An overpass plain as concrete,

Bridging the town boundary of Giddings, Texas,

Adjacent to my grandparent’s house,

Over a main rail line and a siding.

I crouched underneath on the dirt slope, high up,

Waiting for Southern Pacific trains. 

Cars and trucks drove a few feet

Over my head.

Freight trains rumbled by.

Loaded boxcars flashed their steel sides

with exotic names: Erie & Lackawanna, 

Chesapeake & Ohio, Cotton Belt.

More than once, 

On a slow train day

I shot a Coke bottle

Filled with pee

Off a rail with my BB gun.

My ears were peeled

To sounds of summer: mourning doves, cicadas,

The first faint rumble of distant diesels,

A train horn

At a far-off farm-to-market road crossing.

After dark,

My finger followed

The sinuous, black-hatched line on maps

Across county and state lines, east and west.

I didn’t need to hop a freight to travel.

I was carried away,

Rumbling through landscapes,

Honking at crossings,

Barreling under bridges,

Waving back from the engine cab

At boys waving at me.

—David Markwardt