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There is an art bridge I like very much. It is golden and it bounces if you stand still and hold on to the railing and concentrate.

I have friends who live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They say there's over a hundred bridges in the city. "Bridges work differently here." One she arrives with her belt buckle and dark shadows under her eyes. I notice that her G. has them too. Not the belt buckle, but the eyes. She one is from Texas. She says "sweet baby" and reads literature.

"Yeh, they are not for connecting you from point a. to point b., like most bridges. These ones are for getting you lost." One point to the other point. The other point to this point.

My teeth hurt when I think about it, but bridges are not for that kind of thinking. They relieve you of that, even if you are lost. Some have bike or pedestrian walkways, like in New York or Portland, Oregon; some have glass like in Minneapolis in the dead of Winter. Troubled water below turns into vehicles, uncrossable currents, sure cuts across what is usually a very long, long route.

I arrive late, keep my hosts up way past their bed time, and stretch out time differently into the wee hours. Three of us, some cats, a cute dog. My friend, the one with the Twin Cities drawl says to me, "If someone comes in late at night, it is the cat. Just so ya know."

I am learning there are not ghosts here. There could be. A hundred bridges in a city, so many that are hidden in hills a few feet high. You could be walking up a hill and spot a bridge out of the corner of your eye. You could stretch your arms behind you and almost reach another. Yes, they're industrial and heavy and cars running across. But they are everywhere, bending in the wind like good bridges. Commerce, industry, love, loss, lost, liminal, citizenship. How many bridges separate me from you? Who will you think of as you cross a bridge today? Does it save you time, steal time, become part of modern time, multiply time, confirm time, algorhymithe time?

My friend tells me I can be "sir" for the duration of my five days in Pittsburgh. "Just lower your voice when you talk," she says. "It's fun." And I am more excited than I have ever been. "It is so gender consevative here that ya get ta." Take away the anger, take away the violence, take away the abjection I feel around my gender, and I'm in a bus, tired from a day of work, reading. The guy that drives the bus stops, and as I sit he says, "hey, buddy, this is your stop." And I look up, and there's no body else on the bus but me. Hey, buddy.

The Bridge That Saved Me From Worry (a prayer)

It was dark: the sun, she was setting; my friends, practicing French with The Little Prince. She, Brussles, He, Ohio. She, New Zealand. She, he. The Sahara desert. She, hung like a horse. He, a table.

Someone gets philosophical and says this is a tale of life and death. I learn to say, "Mes genoux fait a mal." En bien, je fait ecrire mes mots. I have friends separated by stone bridges, wood planks, conceret. Some with crackling leaves, yellowing and also a thin stream of water, like glass, like typical thin moutain clean water that is put on TV like thin glass, thin thin glass, only it's so not cutting. Thin glass, the most amazing thing to walk in because it is not thin glass.

My favorite kind of bridge: the one that's tactilic. At mid-day, we have no trouble crossing over the rushing river in the stream, a bridge we have made by eyesight: one boulder to the next. At night, it is more difficult. And I think of that boy from Into the Wild who died in Alaska only because he could not cross the water with an injured ankle. So he died.

Our bridge is teetering at night, but with the help of the horse on one side, and the table on the other, we cross to the sounds of bird co-coos which we make, a verbal bridge connecting she's and he's over the sound of the rushing river.

I think I have never met a bridge I did not like. Even full of seaweed or bird do-doo. Even if it smells like anchovies at an awful marine biology zoo.

If you cross a bridge by mistake, it is both exciting and also not abstract. Scared shitless. If I die on this side of the bridge, that will be my life, forever.

I think my life has fallen apart seven times, for ever. I have an old friend who says, "People die everyday, I don't see why we need to be in touch now." That's a bridge, uncrossable ever over again. You were careless with your words. We were careless with each other. I see. When you hear me, traveling over a field of clouds to go somewhere for work or a friend or family, your new niece or newphew perhaps, I will tell you, I think I was careless with my actions. I think you were careless with your words. Yours fed by anger that reaches further back than me. Mine: fed by indirect passion. Deferral.

The clouds are beautiful in the early morning sun when you are above them.

But when crossing a bridge, you must be very attentive, not closing your eyes. Not yelling loudly.

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