Ted Getzel Works

The Span

Above the flexing tidal strait
The harbor’s bass harp hums.
Iconic stone towers
Pierced by gothic arches
Hoist the twisted steel parabolas high.
I stride upon the subtler arc
Suspended beneath
The fourfold encased cables
that reach for infinity.
A gull with motionless wings
Floats on a brisk breeze beneath a high October sky.

Laura to my left Julia to my right
Twin jewels,
Their facet faces,
refract the pure fall light,
and dazzle every eye they enter.

Drunk on images
I lean on their beauty
To steady myself as I gulp down the scene.

The riptide swirls below,
Gold leaf glints above
scrubbed clean of its tragic soot.

Spectral Span
The afterimages of the fallen towers,
Twin wraiths in a dark place.
The ghost navy yard and its shadow ships.
The business of war.
A barge loaded with crushed cars
Pushed by a tug
Toward a fiery furnace in the far east.

Ellis Island comes into sight;
Former gateway to
The tubercular tenements
That are now homes
For trust fund trendies
From around the world,
Comforted by Keynesian compounding,
Slumming in sanitized safety
As they seek sex, fame and power.
Now the cold water flats

That housed howling poets
Have been converted to condos.

Spectral Span
Sandhog blood
Is mixed with river bottom silt
That is the burial ground
Of men who built her.

Span of legends
Span of the bends
Monument to the dawn of the Modern Age
One hundred and thirty five feet above
A rainbow oil slick roiled by a tanker’s wake
A river of traffic flows
Hot rubber against cold steel-

I hear this Gossamer Goddess

Hum a funeral march.

I run to catch up with my beautiful companions.