BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI by Nancy Simpson

All those times, all those bridges, 

Georgia to Florida, sand

in his shoes, red clay in his pocket,

I wonder what passed through my father's mind.

He never said much about hurricanes

or corn, except that you pull it not pick it

One summer in Georgia I promised to pull

all the corn in ten acres he planted.

Indolent girl, red clay in my pocket,

I remember a movie in east Atlanta.

Prisoners built a bridge across water,

building, building the whole movie.

I was too young to know why

they blew it all to pieces in the end.

This morning a half drowned woman wakes me.

I open the window.  She has come many miles

across water.  Her memories are mine.

She gives me one starfish, one mango

and reminds me how I climbed the tree

when the flood came, after the hurricane.

I give her anemone for starfish.

I give her a mountain, the safest place to be.

from  NIGHT STUDENT