The Column

I was a column under a dark bridge into fog. I’m told the other side holds an island of madness. When white moths form a question mark in the air, when wasps make a woman’s purse, when marbles spell I love you in the snow, a lone man with a leather satchel begins to cross. He’s a year on the approach, a year on each girder, and an old man when he enters the fog. Meanwhile, I’m urinating into a fish’s mouth. I have no classical order, and my insides are the same as what’s exposed to the weather, which never changes. My pylons have many spikes in their palms, but the swaying of the bridge puts them to sleep before they make anything of it. All the while the fog imprisoned the madness on the other side. Barges blew their horns; we assumed the crazies thought it was the hunting horn of a warden in the sky.