Central Jersey Roads
I’ve only ever been here, in an eternity of Januarys.
People have told me about other places,
just never the roads leading in or out
of those states, or about the bridges
one might enter by. I’ve known the old
Ridge Road bridge that haunted Monmouth Junction
years after it was abandoned to a highway bypass,
how it became a birdcage in the woods’ ribs,
the birds like little hearts beating and leaving.
Most bridges in my life are made of ice,
promising more than they can deliver
and too slippery for my feet,
too heel-achingly cold.
These Central Jersey roads
change names suddenly between towns
or when they straighten after a sharp right
so that I lose sight of where I’ve been
and where I intended to go.
What can I do except drink the water I will never ford,
suck the icicle dripping from my house’s broken gutters
until it numbs my cheek, look up at the Wolf Moon, alone
in an otherwise invisible sky and think,
Of course it’s small. It’s January.
