Posts Tagged ‘bridges’
eulogy for a covered bridge
This past week, New Brunswick lost another covered bridge: the William Mitton Covered Bridge in Riverview. Ray Boucher, Chairman of the Covered Bridges Conservation Association of New Brunswick, suggested I write a poem. Of the 340 covered bridges in the province in the 1950s, only 58 remain.
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sorrow
William Mitton Bridge
1942 – 2025
“…because I’ve seen it die.”
- Ray Boucher
advocate for covered bridges
in New Brunswick
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crosses the river
for the last time
its reflection brief
in the brown stream
tributary of Turtle Creek
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mud banks carved and sculpted
a waterbird, neck broken, a mangle
rubble of broken beams and boards
weakened burr trusses, punky beams
broken boards, holes for sunlight
to drill through
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initials scratched and scrawled
on greying surfaces, overcome
with lichen, moss and mildew
inscriptions at weddings
graduations, tourists
school photos
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its twenty-three metres
or more, once crossed
an Acadian river
Sainte-Marie-de-Kent
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in myth, the ‘travelling bridge’
floated down the river
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in fact, removed, by a resourceful
farmer, William Mitton
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purchased the bridge
took it down, plank by plank
moved, rebuilt in 1942, to connect
his farm to Coverdale Road, his name
became the name of the bridge
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a place to play
between rafters
thump and climb
chase echoes
a place to relax
watch the river
between gaps
in wall boards
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spring floods
and abutments reel
snow loads break its back
echoes fail beneath snap
and sag of weakened boards
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an excavator, a high hoe
a crane, lifts its rigid neck
takes the Mitton Covered Bridge
apart, one wood fibre
at a time
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All my best
Jane Tims
ghosts are lonely here ….. new poetry collection
This spring, I began to gather together the various poems I have written over the years. One of my recurring interests has been abandoned buildings and other discarded human-built structures. And now, here is my book of poems about abandoned humanscape … ghosts are lonely here.
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My book is available in paperback and includes 45 poems and 14 of my original pencil drawings. Most of the poems are about abandoned structures in New Brunswick, Canada.
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We live in a time when built landscape is often in a state of abandonment: old churches, old bridges, old schools, old buildings. Add to this abandoned vehicles, abandoned boats and deteriorating stone walls, over-grown roads and decommissioned rail lines, and we exist in a landfill of nineteenth and twentieth century projects, abandoned to time. These poems listen to the histories and stories of the abandoned. The poems are sometimes sad, sometimes resentful, always wise.
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To order ghosts are lonely here, click here.
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Have a great day.
Jane
nichepoetryandprose 