A way of holding things up, as the Zakim Bridge
holds up the cables that hold up
the nearly horizontal wedge and grids
that hold the boxed-in traffic in its variable
progress north to Somerville.
It holds us taut. It stretches out our days.
Without its gates and levels, we would slip
too rapidly off and onward, towards the end
which is the only end
no storyteller knows, or disobeys.