Crossing Tacoma Bridges with My Pregnant Daughter

I notice moss in the cracks of the peeling white footbridge.

Its wooden arms reach across the tracks of trains

that crawl through the belly of Titlow Park. We stop,

hands on the railing, look down, look into the woods

where tracks disappear, look through foliage to the Sound.

Days later, on another walk over Narrows Bridge, I notice twin

crisscross symmetries of early metal towers perched on piers

mirroring newer concrete ones; sage green suspension cables—

sloped, parallel, curving pipes she says her family of firefighters

climb, clipped into handrails, to the tops of tower saddles

where they rappel to the Sound to practice emergency

rescue. It is my privilege to notice only moss and eras

of architecture after a bridge has collapsed, to feel my nerves

jolt with the thought of her precarious ascents and descents.

Beneath, or perhaps, transparently overlaid like thin skin

upon these rare moments of our togetherness, my daughter

also sees bodies leapt upon tracks, a beloved, sad dispatcher

scattered by a train, crushed women and men floating

on the Sound that rushed up like pure despair, that liquid body

like unforgiving, then forgiving, concrete. Every so many yards,

a sign is posted on the bridge that makes a promise:

“There is always hope,” followed by a number to call

that ends with TALK. We don’t. Standing there, suspended,

we span memories of a bullet hole in a wooden floor,

a hoodie pulled up to spare our eyes a rope burned neck.

We take in the view of the ragged, verdant shore, our ears

lashed by traffic’s knives. She says, “I can still hear the frogs….

Listen, what is that called?” Susurrus, I say. We pause. Listen.

“Through the Woods,” by Jason Abington

photo by Carson Diaz