RED LGHTS OF THE TALL GRAY BRIDGE

294. RED LIGHTS OF THE TALL GRAY BRIDGE (1997):

Then it is as if everything happened all at once - 252 E. Clinton Avenue the big stone house the rolling yard covered with plantings and the old concrete statuary and the advancing night coming up from Fort Lee and the high rises on the cliffs and the taint of a town that wishes to still be but a village and cannot any longer be so and the CNBC Building with its big giant letters once at 2000 Fletcher Avenue and the pillioned iron struts of the gigantic vacant busted but running still George Washington Bridge and the grassy advances to it on either side and the pin-heads of those walking the vast great span stretching between natural rocks and man-made rocks on the other side and the cars rolling freely boiled it seems in their own oil and dirtied by the air and dirtying the air at the same time and the whiz roar and hum of traffic and blare of horns growing louder at the toll booth quiescent in its slumbers the addled lines of the numbered and nervous waiting to buy lined up with cash and change to flow the theatergoers and crossers to New York anxious to dine anxious to meet their reservation seating zipping drinking dancing holding lovers hands to heart in the car-seats bursting strapped with companions and dates and friends and lovers and partners and couples and everywhere it seems people moving intent to move and the awesome fearsome lines and lights of the great city laid out before us invites us to walk on and peer through the woods and at the glens and rocks of the old fort and the revolutionary war lookouts and peerages and even the lighthouse far down below and under the bridge on the farther other side as all the lights come up and the outlines of the dizzying buildings change for us and the rows and hedges and caverns and bars and restaurants of old Fort Lee breakaway from time and its reality now the dusted fields cobbled and broken with rocks and waste the 7-11 the diner the Hiram's and Callahan's of the heart the finely attired oriental waiters waiting between things and tables white with linen on their arms and scones and pastries ready for the tea and the tasting and the wholesome sound of cash resounding between every hill and rock and canyon on both sides of the Hudson which flows and tinkling peal of laughter and coin and cash and those who've got it amidst those who haven't and they squander what they will as it turns to food and vintage wine and goods too precious to describe yet go on go on and the bridge rails seem to support the whole entire world as they rise high above and the pinpoint prick of the roadway becomes but a dot in the distance and the high school and the funeral home and the gas station and the kosher deli everything seems to sit and squabble at the rubble'd lane where used cars are sold and others rented and the buses tumble from above as people walk every nation every color represented like some stupid juice of the world dripping on and on and the road where it splits offers two vistas and more and 9W the highway paces north and the palisades tremble and we are off just like that ! departed northward and Alpine and Tenafly and Cresskill and Closter tumble haphazard by with no order except the order of signs and places and trains and shacks and weeds and woods and the rock house still sits and from its yard I look up and watch the patterned all returning planes and jets and airbuses and turbine'd engines rock and tilt the nighttime sky going and coming somewhere from to the citadel of Newark the airport of shackles and God beckons I guess the light within the sky and the great jets carom and turn aloft and below the grounded lights of buildings and cargo and trucks and homes sit still and shine and all the upward stars are dissolved by human light and almost nothing else is seen and the great rock house sits with its broken deer concrete statues warily eyeing the road and great-neck geese in concrete sit atop each ledge and planters and shrubs resound and the squared-off room behind filled with plants and greenery a cactus of the heart like a distant-landed-Arizona forgotten but between lives and in silences recalled and the rolling land the hillside the yard everything comes together at once some fiery hallucinatory conclusion made too fast and in haste so it goes on and I sit on the porch behind the vastness of the stone house and I read in its brick and stone and wood the 70 year old story of all its time and place how it got here and how it was built and who lived here and how they grew out and left here and who replaced them and the photos and the mementos and the interior landscape eerie air the rooms rich with old time and memory the slow crawl of all we live inside each place the very paper on the walls to speak and willing relates itself to me still I sit and watch as the whole globe world turns and changes around me I feel as if new never here before with the wind and the trees around me I witness at one with all things and my mind own mind rushes back itself to other places and like homes I've walked the ruination chorus of destruction where windows are fallen and boarded and rooms and stairways are broken and blasted to death and crumbled down I have visited places in silence and they stand until they are gone then disappear in the slough of time and bulldozers remove this trace and that and what was there is not any longer and new homes like rakes scratch the land and piled up squat or tall ugly or not the new things cannot abide the old and the world is thereby ravaged and the places transformed and I sit back in this gasp and silence and awe and wonder on and on about all things and there behind me somewhere blinking the red beacon lights of the tall gray bridge.