A PATH TO THE WASHED OUT BRIDGE

North Fork, Kings River

MANGLED BRIDGE AND ROSY CROSS

Scrambling down a steep slope, I paused to kneel

before an Ithuriel’s spear, a rattlesnake rippling

by my boot before I could even jump, lizards

scampering over dry leaves, the river crashing

through the canyon below. Once I flew over

unstable stones in the river bottom, struggling

to keep up with my brother and his friends--today

I surveyed each inch before taking a step.

I discovered the skeletal steel frame of a washed-out bridge

clinging to a megalithic stone in the middle

of the river, and I remembered--Forty years ago,

our friend excitedly told us about the mangled bridge,

and without another word we had dashed through

the river bottom to find it. That day I had felt clumsy

and weak (the first sign of chronic illness), and I

just couldn’t keep up. I had been ditched before

on a moonless night and in a cave, but never

abandoned in broad daylight. Today I was twelve

again, but I found the bridge and they didn't, and,

unlike them, I continued to wander through a forest

of symbols, the bridge for a moment a ghastly symbol

of the past forty years. Yet I somehow felt the same,

as though I had found a timeless place of the soul.

Our fathers, who had fished side by side that day,

both died a few years later. Forty years ago

in this same river bottom, my daimon, my Holy

Guardian Angel, on several occasions,

had spoken to me of events to come, decades

in the future, but I, nonplussed, had forgotten

the voice until the events finally happened.

The perplexing, unpredictable Angel

is only my soul, whose voice transcends

space and time--mysteriously in this river bottom

and in meditation--so today I closed my eyes,

a rose cross suddenly in my mind's eye, the rose

at first blood-red on splintery wood,

Rosy Cross

then the petals different colors, each petal

symbolizing a path on the Tree of Life,

the cross an unfolded cube of space

and time. I could have been anyone,

these past forty years, and this forest

would still seem the same as it was then,

yet the rose cross bloomed inside me,

and perhaps eternally abides, a symbol

of the soul in timeless grace,

the river bottom forgotten until I opened

my eyes again as a snake slithered

through curling, hand-like leaves.