Michael Yost

The Bridge

Holiday

For Charles Augustine

The Merrimack runs past our town

North from the White Mountains, past

Old Canterbury, Concord; bends

Sharply to eastward and then tends

Meanderingly southward, down

Towards the sea at last.

Above those broad, cold mountain currents,

Three separate bridges throw

Themselves across the river’s span

Like past and future in a man.

Small waves are born and die, recurrence

Within the onward flow.

One wide and heavy, dark with rust,

Is laid with railroad tracks.

Another, in a gentle arc

Of concrete looms both new and stark

Ripe with exhaust, and noise, and dust

From Fords and Pontiacs.

I walk across the third with Charles;

This footbridge, in the heat of noon

And springtime come to strength.

And as we step across its length,

The wood, with its cross-sectioned gnarls

Receives our foot-fall’s beat.

For a time, we walk together,

But then he runs away

As fast as his boy’s legs can pace;

Against the distance speeds his race;

As sun released from darkness’ tether,

To course a newer day.

And transverse to his joyful path

The river makes a cross,

And swells beneath the bridge’s frame.

Both changing and always the same;

Both origin and aftermath;

Both utter gift and loss.

So I watch at a standstill, lost

Within the widening gap,

And he grows smaller with each stride

Like boats departing with the tide.

My wandering with his has crossed.

His path I cannot map.

I cannot my own son deliver. 

Thus is the future past.

I hear my voice, by time defiled:

“Where do you run so fast, my child?

Where runs the movement of the river?

Why does it run so fast?” 

Faust: Who art thou then?

Mephistopheles: . . . Part of that Power, not understood,

Which always wills the Bad, and always works the Good.

. . . I am the Spirit that denies!

       –Faust, Part I, Scene: In Faust’s Study

So little under heaven 

Is sweeter than a gin

And tonic at eleven:

Wind ripples cherry skirts,

Uncovers cream-soft skin,

As she now sways, now flirts.

It is a very natural perfection,

Preventing us, at least, from disaffection.

O let Lord Bacchus’ bliss

Bless beer can’s snap and hiss,

Pent “pop” of champagne cork,

And gin cap’s crackling torque.

Let speech be lifted up,

In silver plate and cup.

Let there be cocktails on the lawn at eight,

To help us love the life we cannot hate.

O may Lord Bacchus keep

Tobacco’s tinder rustle,

Blue strand of lithe smoke’s leap;

Warm round of light-brown muscle,

Crystal’s chime in parlor,

Ring of late night laughter

— The garden lilts with whispers and brown eyes.

We are not over-righteous, over-wise —

And breathe benignities

Upon bare necks and knees;

On all meet meals, this fête

Where vanities, unhindered

View charity’s fine flindered

Candlelight, lit late.

Remember nothing. Nothing loved will last.

All feasts resolve in everlasting fast.

Michael Yost is a poet and essayist living in rural New Hampshire with his wife and children, as well as an alumnus of Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, where he works as the Director of Admissions. He earned his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of St. Thomas in Houston. His essays and poems have been published in places like The University Bookman, Dappled Things, Crisis Magazine, St. Austin Review, The Brazen Head, and Hearth and Field. Follow him on his Substack: The Weight of Form.