When boat lights flick on at dusk
the eye nimbly orders them
into constellations: a sky menagerie
as the fog roams in.
Arabs would have picked out
the ocher and the blue stars
naming them Fomalhaut, Rigel or Vega,
so nomads could spell their exile
with grains of light, and sense
even in the far-flung mazes of sand
other lids closing to the same lullaby.
Downstream, its steel paws
coated in river oil, a bridge arches
a sooty back against the night,
frozen in that delicate stretch forever.
Trinket small, a hefty machine
stands below, where it was left at 5:00 P.M.,
its limbs jutting out
like the crab of some metaphor
ready to pince life and drag it into view.
The men who work its arms
in the short hours after dawn
when blue does a veil dance
over the water, and sunlight throbs
each rivet into place,
in their private moments
away from the whistle-hoot and holler
do they love the architect of that bridge,
or what he loved?