Elegy for the Martyrs
of the Francis Scott Key Bridge
The shadow flowed and whispered “cold” beneath its breath.
The dark Patapsco River opened to the sea,
naming darkness as it labored from the west.
Upriver, past the buoys in the dockyard, all the rest
of the freighters lay at anchor in the barren lee
of darkened quays, dark for the hours without breath.
Their sullen engines kept the night alive (while pilots slept)
until the hour to be driven down the bay
in slow procession working from the west.
We worked pavement on the bridge. We saw the cold sun set,
the asphalt night, the wintered vestments of the sky.
The shadow, counting (soft) beneath the seaway of its breath,
blew out its light, and stamped the sea with lead effect,
shouldering south by slow degrees.
The wind moved round the underworld to north of west.
A pilot’s trade with stars will know how best
to keep a channel underneath a heavy keel
(if the wind holds out along the river’s breadth).
But the wind would not, and blew from north north-west
across the empty mirror of the sea,
the shadow whispering “darkness” as it grew immense,
the litany of our names (our breath) upon its lips.
Marc Wiegand has participated at a number of academies, among these the University
of Texas at Austin, and the British Institute for International and Comparative Law, and
has been an Affiliate Fellow in visual arts at The Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbria,
Italy. His poetry has appeared in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Blue Unicorn, The Penwood
Review, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, Westward Quarterly, and, soon, The Journal of
Undiscovered Poets and The Madrigal Press. He is an international lawyer, writer and
exhibiting visual artist who lives and works in the Texas Hill Country.
www.artmarco.net/works