Being a Bridge is Not About You | Gaudete Sunday 2019

Brick and River by Brennan Robinson

There was a brick on the bridge’s bottom,
Who had wearied of what elders taught him
In song they’d sing about being a brick,
The joy with brother to bridge bottom stick.

But hardly he heeded lore of the lot
And often in dream to water he plot.

Shouting in wonder at water below.
‘tell of your journeys over reed and stone!’

The whipping water hadn’t time to tell,
But bouncing off rock it bellowed a yell:
“From mountains to marsh, to myriads more;
I’ve seen trees dance and dandelions soar.
Wind is my brother, and stone is my work,
If you’d to see, off the bridge you would jerk.”

The brick shook at the sound, and stirred a hope;
Mortar chipped off, how desperate he groped.

“To mountains and marshes, wild as wind,
Let me loose to the lore of creatures finned.”

He wriggle and fought, begging the weather,
“Send rain, oh sky, to loosen my tether.
Too long my burden buried under brick,
To journey, and change, to nothing ill stick.
I’ll fly in flow with fish and feet kicking,
Oh the freedom to nothing be sticking!”

The sky gave it’s rain and loosened the grime,
He would feel his fall in not long a time:

For subtle a budge he gave the brittle,
And burst from the bridge alone and little.

“Im flying!” he felt, “to marshes and more”
But breaching the water, he quick hit the floor.
He shook and struggled but sand kept him still,
He soon felt the flow, but fleeting his thrill.

Now without warmth from brothers of brick
His only encounters were bumps from sticks.

Down there for days he lie in his lonesome,
Low and longing he recalled his homesong:

“We brothers of brick here buried beneath,
Are bridging two lands of marvelous heath,
A burden we bear but none else we’d be,
For our life as bricks is far beyond we.
To mountains and meadows, by man we’re made
By kings we’re cross’d, so no river they’d wade,
For fellow or queen or army brigade,
For greatest of journeys here we remain.”

His humming soon hollowed as hope seem’d drown,
He dared only dream a brother come down.
Water whipped over and purpose it stole,
From brick to stone he felt corners grow dull.

And up above the brothers so mourned,
Feeling his fall with middle now torn.
They rustled and rubbed and loosened the lime,
Their future demise was matter of time.

Until, splash and sprinkle, brick and glue fell
One a top other, no order to tell.
Bumping and jumping, a total collapse,
They fell to their future, no land to grasp

__

To his surprise, the brick found his brothers,
he shouted with joy over confusion and mutters:

“Bricks of my bridge and bearers of burden,
Lonely I’ve been with future uncertain.
Waiting and wanting the warmth of your weight,
Cold and bitter have been my days of late.
Even as I speak the rush is slowing,
for side by side we’ve ceased waters flowing.”

Indeed he was right for fruit of their jam,
Was watered now bundled up in a dam.

The stream stopped still and the current silenced,
Water then whined with vehement violence.
“Why have we stopped, until sea we must go!”
All seemed to point to a brick down below.

There he recalled elder voices so true,
That “Being a brick is not about you.”

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