Roebling Suspension Bridge
             Cincinnati


Above myriad purple martens
wheeling from shore to wharf
before night falls over thin fog,
a solitary raven floats --
reading air currents
as cicadas years,
as bats read waves --
hovering round and round
your center, a fixed circle
forming a black sun
winging above and between,
and in such silent sound
marking with your catenating curve
a fermata which holds
Ohio and Kentucky,
which holds within
that which we move across
to become, which holds,
like the seeds
in raven's winged tomb waiting,
what we might most nearly be
in the final light.



John B. Kryder


Poems