"Bridges" by John Nuck - Contest Entry

Bridges

By John Nuck

Before we met, I felt

like the mountain-climber,

Greg Mortenson,

staggering into the village

of Korphe, lost and alone.

You opened your arms to me

like the trusting villagers

who embraced Greg, freely

sharing the very best

of their butter tea, laden with

goat milk, yak butter and kindness,

During my convalescence,

we spent long, lazy afternoons sharing

war stories of our divorces,

of wounds that won't heal.

One quiet evening we briefly shared

the exquisite pleasure of finding the wooden pestle

you thought lost years ago and cradling it back

where it belonged in a decorative mortar, carelessly

purchased during another life, when things seemed

to stay where they belonged.

So tenderly, for a little time,

we groped to tie together

the loose strands of our lives.

But unlike the bridge that Greg,

the humanitarian, built to connect Korphe with the rest of the world,

the loosely tied cords of our bridge were not strong enough

to hold up against the biting winds of fear,

unraveling from distrust every bit as fierce as the gales

of the Karakoram that still buffet Greg's bridge of gratitude today.

If only that pestle and mortar were more than decorative;

we could ground the ingredients that would have helped us

trust each other in the same way the villagers trusted,

sustaining themselves on butter tea and comforting those

who wander in, lost and alone.

We thought we had been so wise,

learned from our past missteps,

to tread as lightly as possible

on the creaking boards

of our fledgling bridge,

so we could stand together, carefully suspended,

for a little time,

over that lonely chasm.