Jack-Knife Bridge - March 10 2023

 

Jack-Knife Bridge

March 10 2023

Games to play on a bridge.

Chicken.

Oncoming train.

High-wire on the guardrail.

Just don't look down.

But “Pooh-sticks” was new to me   —

tossing sticks into the current,

then dashing across

to the downstream side

to see whose comes out first.

A simple game

for innocent kids,

if hardly enough

for thrill-seekers and bored adolescents;

the young men

out to prove themselves.

Later, eyeing the jack-knife bridge

we imagined jumping the gap

in a speeding car

just like in the movies.

Or climbing to the top of the arch

and diving off,

knifing into the murky water

churning far below.

A clean entry,

no trace left.

That one-of-a-kind bridge

also brought to mind

Russian roulette,

or at least the cut-rate version   —

landing a knife

between the open fingers

of a palm-down hand.

But instead of the boy scout kind

we imagined a switchblade's sleek stiletto,

the lethal blade

flicking out

with a sharp metallic snap.

When all we really did

was lean against the rail

tossing coins over the edge.

Talk sports

and tease about girls.

Or see who could hork

a loogie the furthest.

But no lame children's game

for us.

On those hot and humid afternoons

in the doldrums of summer

with nothing much to do.

And now, when there's not enough time for anything,

I think back

through memory's muggy haze

to those watercolour days,

hearing the news about my friend

who did eventually jump.

Yesterday

off the Golden Gate

into the cold grey Bay.

Missed the suicide net.

The body, as yet, unrecovered.

I'll begin with my usual disclaimer that this is not autobiographical.

I came across a mention of the Pooh-sticks game (apparently from the original Winnie the Poo), thought I'd riff, and then got into bridges. As in what else to do on a bridge? Interesting where a riff might take one! (Thunder Bay has a “jack-knife” bridge – a highly unusual type – which is like one half of a typical drawbridge, and works by counter-balanced weight. Only natural that it would come to mind.)

I'm pleased with the turn at the end. The foreshadowing. And the depiction of a particular time of life I think most people would identify with.

Although I feel I’m cheating, writing about such a thing in the 1st person when I'm actually appropriating someone else's grief, even if no it's one in particular: not only devaluing the grief of bereavement, but ennobling myself by means of the presumed suffering.