Postcards of the Tom’s River Bridge

1.
The Tom’s River Bridge
climbs over a bay, nor is it named for Tom,
for there’s no mistakin’ a river and a bay
and a river named Tom and a bay named Barnegat.

2.
The Tom’s River Bridge
climbs over a bay climbs slowly
like the hump of a turtle named Wally,
and descends as slow as a tortoise
in a race with a hare named Willie.

3.
The Tom’s River Bridge
climbs slowly over the bay
and at the peak it houses
two houses and a buckle
that opens for tall ships
ships so tall that they are skyscrapers
on the sea, on the bay, moving
skyscrapers on the waters
beneath the Tom’s River Bridge.

4.
The Tom’s River Bridge
climbs slowly twice, as parallel
snakes slithering on a sand hill
hot and made of concrete, white concrete piers
that stand like ever enlargening dominoes,
white dominoes with no dots
but orange graffiti, way low near the water
spray-painted way low where all messages begin:
Willie the Wanker was here.

5.
The Tom’s River Bridge
climbs as two slow parallels
to reach out to Pelican Island
and bring it into the fold
and Seaside Heights to the water’s
very edge, the bridgeless waters
of the vast ocean where Tom’s
little rowboat took on water
and never returned to dry rock

VI

The Tom’s River Bridge stands frozen
above the white frozen bay
in the icy dead of winter.
“Bridge freezes before the road,”
a sign says truly, for the grated draw
is glazed before and after
the snow plows have restored,
perhaps only momentarily,
the white lines whereby
drivers know their place.

By Patrick McGuire