Painting the Ben Franklin
Morning drowns the red and green glimmering of harbor lights
on tugboats hauling merchants to dock, while cobalt runways
at the airport fade into sky. Rush hour hasn't ended yet, and I feel
the vibration of hundreds of cars in my teeth. Exhaust rolls
from the edge of the bridge, a black mist that falls toward the water
and dissipates. I can't smell the fumes from here, though lower
along the guidewires I'd have to breathe through a surgeon's mask.
I stand midspan and read graffiti the first coat of blue doesn't quite
cover, words scrawled along the walkway, now eroded by ice and rain
and unreadable. The remnants of a gull's nest cling to the corner
of the girder and walk. Old eggshell fragments spotted brown scatter
down and away as I clear the surface. The river, more oily than green,
surges against the pylons, a brackish spray and dull roar. Wind sings
through the lattice of steel cables thicker around than my waist, and toys
with toppling me, an unwilling bungee jumper, a mile from New Jersey
or Pennsylvania, nine stories above the churning where the Delaware bays
at the Atlantic, pounds against the supports. How long would I fall
before the harness caught me, dangling? Could I climb to the platform,
hand over hand, spiderlike? Would the drivers even notice? Would I die?
I paint the words blue.