Five-Arch Bridge

Living shades of Roman-era aqueducts;
there is something beautifully stern,
yet sensuously voluptuous at the sight
of those stone arches, holding the
narrow walled bridge over the granite-
floored rapids fording the Mississippi
river, at the picturesque, time-tardy
town of Pakenham, in eastern Ontario.

Evoking from deep within a sweet
nostalgia for a time before our own,
when at the turn of the 19th Century
around a farming community within a
dreamily bucolic landscape the
excitement of emerging technology
heralded the infancy of the new
age of vastly advanced techniques in
aqua management, to power mills
and locks and lifts and hydro power.

The river is wide and wild in its
tempestuous rush, roiling with
its powerful flow, elements of its
original downstream dam still
revealed, raw and neutered, but
powerful in image and our readily
awed imaginations. White,
wide-winged gulls rest in their
cohorts on granite rocks, rising
lazily to sweep along on the wind.

Marsh marigolds, freshly reflecting
the bright orb of the sun above,
glow insouciantly at the water's edge.
The horizon barely there, the sky adrift
with white wisps echoeing the fiercely
foaming water. The old stone mill
stands beyond the bridge, a sentry not
forlorn, but recalled to use for this era.