Shutter’s Pass

Nothing like it, passing through the nightmare dreams,
making our escape through the pass, narrow steel bridge.
The dull rattle of the deck planks atop the rising waters,
launches the horizontal swift water vertical to defeat.
Collisions, clashes into downward rushing rain,
till those still in climb, become slung over,
to the impatient tap of gravity’s harsh voice.
Racing again, back to the bridge’s timbers,
riveting, twisting, curling up quick the spiral,
in their draft between the pummeling raindrops.
As the dreams of nightmares we clear,
looking back, the cascade, a wall of water,
floods fast our thoughts upon the vertical.

Shutting out our pasts, an escape to a future,
where the sign reads, “Break glass in the case of an emergency.”
But we just had our emergency, do we still need to break the glass,
The race, our escape, it is,
was real but a moment ago, now we’re climbing.

Just then, another sign,
“Fight or flight, your choice brave travellers.”
A flare breaks in the sky behind us,
the flare drifting down through the weather,
whipped about in the relentless rain of the lost.

We have to turn back, we need to help them,
for now we need to fight for and together,
with those of us unable to take flight.
We braked, turned on what must of seemed,
been on the spot of just the exact moment.

Facing the bridge once more,
its narrow gate a gush with hydro chaos.
But on the other side, two young hikers,
stranded coming out of the steep ranges.

Their hopes grim, the mountain waters set,
begin to break their lower bank, first to walk.
We stomp the accelerator, winding sideways,
till we straighten up, the old truck bites the road.

To pull up at the waters edge, what now…
One chance, just nature, one not so tall tree with girth,
maybe just enough, two axes, eight hands, a little height.
with a wind just right, clearance above the wild water’s fury.

Up the muddy slope we went, hickory handles in our hands,
swinging blows from either side, swinging beneath the torrential.
Till once there came a crack, after long trade swapped in effort,
a new bridge here came visible, the tree it gave its life.

After the day we saved the hikers,
the many months they now have passed.
Where time soon sort our return, and for that we’re left a gasp,
as where the tree once stood, fresh stands here a young one,
in life it now takes hold….