Golden Gate, cont.:

Clouds shift and re-shape themselves
around a slow-moving sun, the blinding
pivot-point.  Like a negative image
of the dark whorl of the past

 
whereunto I turn... and to what end?
What goodness lies in climbing (blind)
back into a forest of faint imagery?
The bridge is not a tower.  Horizontal,

 
friendly, it reaches from bank to bank, 
backwards, forwards, back and forth,
a humble road underwriting titanic pride
(those vast suspension gates, sun-drenched

 
masts of vertigo) – mere bearer of traffic.
The clouds drift by above, the river moves
and moves beneath... and someone slowly
dances along the parapet, a whorl

 
upon my brainstem, an anchorage –
motionless in timespace – a spiral, a J –
and so the bridge (humilitas)
is a towering door (sublimitas)

 
and I must walk through the gate again
with my eyes closed, and step to the edge
(like her) into empty 
space

 
*

 
grey whale, or child
hid away in the amygdala
grey pigeon or dove, grey rock
amid limestone (iris-tinged)

      
                                  6.2.05