At Twilight, on the Morrison Bridge

I see it open,
the metal roadbed rising like the wings
of a butterfly at rest.
And I see that it is striped,
longitudinally striped in the most delicate colors
of which steel is capable.
Even the yellow lane markers are attenuated
like rays of sun through the heavy overcast
I know so well.

Driving or walking across the bridge,
you would never see these stripes. By daylight,
you would not see the horizontal six-point star
of razor-edged girders spread beneath your feet.
Only at twilight, stopped in traffic and looking up
might you see these things appear
rising from the gap.

The bells have stopped ringing.
The giant metal wings are folding like a moth's.
I drive east, darkward
over the now nonexistent gap. I carry on my retinas
the afterimage of a thing
I have never seen before.

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