The Bridge at Washington’s Crossing

by Therese Halscheid

Old and awfully narrow —
it never seems like it will hold those who cross.
This is always the case. Cars almost graze each other,
everyone folds in their sideview mirrors, everyone moves slow
must endure the rattle of the steel grid, its open grated floor.
Today, setting off from New Jersey to Pennsylvania,
I again dread the bridge’s collapse, fear the freezing river
beneath me, the Delaware that Washington and his men knew well —
especially that cold Christmas Eve when they rowed
with the winds going against them, their wooden oars at work,
their steel-tipped poles stabbing at sheets of ice
to help push them along.

Almost halfway —
I glance out at the river’s expanse, see the ice floes
and slabs piled along the riverbank I am headed toward —
the side that Washington and his men hailed from,
where they slid down the embankment
and thrust the Durham boats in.
Their risk never fails to ride with me.
Moving forward is like traveling back in time
to where I sense their distinctive valor the night they set off,
some without shoes, their feet wrapped in cloth.
They did not yet know the history they were making.
They only knew their cause — and held to that
dream of freedom from which we have long been reaping —
though, of late, we seem on the verge of collapsing,
like a bridge about to give way.