the bridgeman

There comes a wail from someplace distant...

"From the other side of the expanse,"the man mutters, aloud.

He shutters, and labours on...

Slavishly up the hill...

The ever winding trail...

Undone by stygian chill...

E'er chasing his own tail...

He thinks to himself that he has been too long wasted...

Looking unto shimmering sea, or starlit sky...

Unto ether...

Or unto waves...

Either of which are...

Vague and constant...

As are his days.

In truth, the sound is more like a grunt...

Of existential...

Bestial...

Release...

Or renewal...

But whence, or from whom it came...

He does not know.

He hastens unto his earthen hovel from his labours...

Perpetual, as they seemingly are...

Incessant.

It is not yet dawn, but he can smell her on the air...

Like a promise...

Or a reminder...

Of his function...

And though dreaming of the lyre that Orpheus had once shared with him...

All those vast and swirling notes...

Those deep and transcendent tones...

They obscure what they denote...

The fact of being...

Alone...

This is of little comfort to him now.

Entered unto living space, the man ignites a shaft...

Then soon, the mantle is illuminated...

Then soon, the walls.

Portraits of family members...

Torrid about the living or their lives are there...

As others...

Are not...

Neither in spirit...

Nor in form.

Atlas is there...

Tormented, yet defiant lights converge within his eyes...

And Prometheus...

Such a capacity for giving, that guy...

There are families of...

Five...

Four...

Four...

And zero...

Each of these are depicted there in some iron oxide-hematite...

Or manganese dioxide...

Charcoal...

The red and the black...

Like Stendhal.

Steam rises in bilious coils from the hot whiskey with which the man sits down at the circle of stones within which he makes fire.

Over the long years, he has come to affectionately refer to this circle...

His home...

As "Hestia."

She is patient with him...

She endures his presence...

And his folly...

As her flames rise...

And the whiskey sinks in...

He is reunited with the tunnel in which he became as he is...

The bridgeman...

At the eternally beguiling confluence of passion and desire...

Impetus, and restraint...

To a point...

And at that point...

Within that tunnel...

He can see so vividly the way it has begun...

And ended...

Time and time again.

The man takes another sip of his hot whiskey...

As the distant bell sings the hour...

Sing...

Sing...

Shadows on the dank and concave walls lean in at him as if settling in for a story that they already know too well...

And yet...

They cannot get enough of it...

They revel in the man's despair...

For having traveled so far...

For having arrived...

Nowhere.

Beyond the narrow window frames of the structure within which he waits to greet the dawn, amid a chorus and a confluence of past, present, and future moments congealing at the wound...

The man beholds a flaming Zeppelin plummeting to ground from sky...

A string of bright red letters is likewise put asunder...

Flaming letters...

"Darling, I love you..."

Burning.

The man can hear from within the earth itself, the percussive and pestilent movement... 

Of an eastern army marching unto the north...

A western army marching unto the south...

There are natural land and sea barriers dividing them...

But these are easily overcome...

If there is a will...

And all it will ever take for any elements of utterly opposing belief and ideology to meet in some vague and eternal...

Ravenously expectant...

Middle...

Battlefield...

Is a bridge.

In pursuit of conflict...

And in the sating of bloodlust...

There is always a bridge...

But what of love?

And dream?

The man is too tired to reflect upon the specifics that pervade countless centuries of doing...

Undoing...

Doing...

Undoing...

He sighs and reaches for the bottle of ambrosia that his mother had given him at the bridge...

The last...

Gift.

They had poured the mythic drink and had raised their earthen cups...

"You have the best and biggest heart I know, and one day it will serve the world."

Now the man wondered...

Again...

Had that been a curse?

Somehow?

In any case, he would think only of the last one...

The last one.

He thought of reluctance, and of concern...

Of experiential divide...

And of the burn...

And ultimately...

True to his nature...

He had followed the lyre...

The idea, or ideal of love...

To which all hearts and souls...

Aspire...

As he had done too many times before.

But what those lovers did not know...

What they would not...

Know...

Was the toll...

That it always...

Takes.

Part II

Wood, Sea, and River Sprites gather at the man's head with the dawn...

It is time to awaken.

He groans in protest against the inevitability of some later dusk...

Solitary...

Hopelessness...

No matter what he does, or does not do...

Despite...

Him.

But time is a tunnel, and he has learned over the years to flip the script in accordance with the necessity to...

Continue.

Lazarus hands the man a cup of coffee, a cut of herring, and a flask.

The man receives these gifts, but says nothing.

Everything that might have been said, had been conveyed thus...

Eyes lowered to the ground...

Again...

The man emerges from his hovel and descends unto the valley...

Like a leaden host of dreaming, dross...

And hope.

When he arrives at the expanse, the Sprites are there to greet him and to wish him a Selfless day...

That he may perform his function...

As do we all.

He pauses before making the reach to consider the interminable impossibility of ever feeling better about the dawn, or the dusk...

The margins in-between...

If this is all there is.

Vague and...

Constant.

He drinks of the flask provided him.

The sky is a maelstrom of colours...

Both real, and imagined.

The man wishes silently...

As he becomes the bridge...

That rainbows could be restored once more...

Unto sky...

And not aligned with some earthbound...

Divisive...

Battlecry.

Thor hammers his endorsement...

At the head...

And the man becomes a means...

To endings...

And beginnings...

For all those...

In need...

For anyone...

But the man, himself.

His body morphs into conveyance, itself...

For all his love, and the breadth of his hopeful and eternal heart...

He is the way...

To wherever it is...

That one is meant to arrive...

Or to disappear completely.

And for him to be this...

These myriad versions of what is...

Needed...

He conjures all those earthen highs...

And lows.

His body has somehow extended and expanded to meet the breadth of heart...

In space...

Dimension...

And one by one he feels the footfall of those who have used him...

Crossed him...

So as to move...

On.

As a bridge...

Or like a piece of meat...

Slowly spinning...

On the spit...

He can feel moon and starlight...

Grasping at him together with...

Burning...

Hallowed sun...

Rotational...

Eternal...

In turns...

Even as moon...

Starlight...

And sun...

Colour the eyes...

And the body...

Of the woman that he wants...

That he adores...

Since time began...

Like hope...

Like disease...

Like folly.

Like the compulsion to effect conflict...

These wanton, wreaking, warmongering...

Regimes...

They deliberately sow disaffection and...

Divide...

As Hobbes and Machiavelli sit together at the gorge...

Freeing opiates on smoke unto ether...

With every...

Exhalation...

Proffered.

And at this thought...

At this eternal remnant truth that flickered in the Man's eyes...

Or scraped at his skin like some fatally sharp razor's edge...

He understood.

When one is confronted with a permanent, immovable or irreconciliable set of circumstances...

Or an obstacle...

One must alter one's approach.

One must become something...

More...

One must do something...

That one has not yet...

Tried...

Or done.

The Lyre moved within his blood, and his thoughts began to swim playfully until they emerged unto sky with wings.

For years, centuries, and aeons, the man had allowed it to be...

His interminable state...

He had allowed it for so long...

He could no longer see...

The way...

From past and present...

Tumult...

Unto some vagary called...

Future...

Until...

Of a sudden...

He did.

Some Stygian wail collided with those of Banshee and Valkyrie...

Prometheus slavishly consoled Lazarus by the fire...

Hestia wept into a bowl that Hephaestus had forged solely for the purpose of...

Lamentation...

For, even as it is with humans who collectivise in misery and curse and damn those who dare to be transcend...

The Immortals do the same.

Such is the way of Pantheon.

The man churned everything bold, audacious, and beautiful that he believed he had kept within him, and he stretched further than he had ever stretched...

The heart...

The head...

And then...

Miraculously...

For the first time...

Rather than returning unto hovel at the relative end of another sequence of affording others passage unto the possibility of new beginnings...

The man, himself, pulled himself up onto that distant edge of the expanse.

He stood erect, and remained there for a spell so as to feel wind and new light touch him both...

Within, and...

Without.

Sister Sprites smiled and danced in rings around him as he made his way with purpose, and for the first time...

Unto a day of his...

Choosing.