Crossing The Bridge

New Poem.

May it be said of us
when the time comes to write history
that we crossed the bridge
we were faced with.  We crossed it

though it was not the bridge
we’d hoped for — not the genteel arch
over a clean and narrow stream
with little but discomfort to face if we fell from it,

and not the steel artifact of a golden past
teeming with millions crossing it with us;
for us instead that archetype of peril,
swaying and crumbling one slat at a time,

with so many working to kill us as we crossed,
bullets pealing like bells as they struck
the stone all around us. May it be said of us 
that we never turned our gaze

from the other side to the drop below;
that we held onto each other all the way over
and clung as long as we could to those who fell
along the way, and that when we were across we turned

to the task of putting a better bridge
where the rotten one once had hung.
May it be said of us when we are gone
that we did it the way it should always be done.