Driving across a bridge, so much trust;
unseen trusses, reasonable confidence,
faith sufficient to take a risk,
a chronicle of unfaltering achievement,
or a night road, headlights coming
no fear as you both steer clear,
or when you want news to be true,
without verifying sources.
or when you chance a woman,
who, in two vivifying years,
becomes your well known wife.
Begins another history of lasting.
Years later,
on the back side of midnight,
a bouquet on the nightstand,
colors blinded in darkness,
flowers present as fragrance.
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Reading This Poem
This poem is not informational. It does not ‘tell you’ something you need to know. It is designed to enrich your experience of something common to human beings: our dependence on trust. In the first stanza, our trust of unknown engineers and builders who constructed the bridges we drive over. In the second stanza, the trust is in other drivers on the road. In the third stanza a trust of news sources. We do not have the time or resources to verify everything they report. In the fourth stanza, the trust developed while falling in love which results in making a life commitment to another person. In the fifth stanza, trusting information received through the senses. When the sense of sight is dimmed by darkness, the sense of smell can be trusted.
Those are the focal themes of each stanza. But there are implied themes. Each stanza has an aura of implications as well as associations to other stanzas. For example, in the fifth stanza; years later with flowers on the nightstand implies a happy romantic marriage. This ties in with the final line of the fourth stanza: ‘Another history of lasting.’ It all relates back to the first stanza and the raw experience of trust in so many matters in our daily lives.