The Causeway’s Dream / alan c. smith

He’s implored and cajoled the limp sea
and taunted the formless winds of the hurricane,
dared them again and again, to release him from
his confines, to join the rocks and reefs, sponges
and the sea fans, beneath the shimmering surface.

The causeway has always wanted to submerge,
to separate its hidden segments, lift its front high
and swan dive or slink into the sea below,
to stretch and flex, split and crack, manmade,
asphalt, concrete and tarmac, and release them
in a hail of feral stone and rock to plop, plink,
drop and sink, join the silt and the sand
at the bottom of the great, green, salty drink.

He longs to buck and snap like a raging burro,
flick and free all of the puny vehicles sputtering
across his hide in a rain of metal and rubble,
to disappear in a churning red cloud of rust and gore
or perhaps he’ll spare our fragile lives and simply arch
his smooth and well-trod back and let us roll and slip
and slide, the odd gash and superficial road-rash as
we fall and crash, splash into the ocean, witnesses to the
cataclysmic commotion of a weary old bridge, unhinged,
unhinging himself from his former life of thankless servitude,
to join all that sleeps or dwells in the big, wet maw,
in their free state of caressed-by-the-currents quietude.

•••

Alan C. Smith is a Bermudian writer, performer, and visual artist.  He has been published in POUI, In Our Own Words: A Generation Defining Itself, Caribbean Writer, Under the Moon and Over the Sea: A Collection of Caribbean Poems,Poems United: A Commonwealth Anthology, Bermuda Anthology of Poetry, Chroma, Wildriver Review, Cock No. 7 and other publications.