The Newmarket Creativity Center art and poetry reception was enjoyed by many people. The poetry reading was very enlightening. It was so much fun for me to hear what the poets wrote after studying my paintings.
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| Sold |
Chip Bergeron wrote a poem called "The Old Bridge" for a my painting "Bradford Bridge". The painting was sold that evening in the silent auction. Here is a picture of Chip and his poem.
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| Chip Bergeron, Poet |
THE OLD BRIDGE
Memories are always like this: hazy, indistinct;
I can see engineering-old time, not like it’s done
today:
Concrete on stone footings much wider than the creek.
In the summer it barely flows, but melting snows
Make it in spring a swift freshet, drowning boulders
Otherwise exposed, and rising sometimes to within
inches
Of the bridge bottom. But it always held, and holds
now.
The mind is a funny thing: physical reality is
unclear,
But the events of a boy’s life around the bridge are
sharp;
Sharper than sharp, and focused like beams of purest
light
That will remain uninvented for decades. What
wonderful times!
Do you remember fishing there, catching horn-pout and
perch?
And the day Andy caught that humungous bass, the one
That was unlucky enough to blunder down from the pond?
In high summer we’d shuck our clothes and jump and
splash,
Sometimes diving off the big boulder in the middle.
There was always a deep spot right behind, and boy…
Was that water cold!!! Mom told us to always keep our
Clothes on, but what mothers didn’t know never hurt
them.
It wasn’t as if there was a lot of traffic, and as
long as you
Kept an eye out for girls, nobody minded. We felt so
free!
What about all those skating parties in the winter,
the games
Of swamp hockey and shinny? Or we’d make a long line and
play
Crack the whip, peeling off in a million directions.
One of the
Big kids would build a fire from fallen branches, and
when we got cold
We could get close, and warm hands, feet and
backsides. Someone
Would bring hot dogs, boil water for hot chocolate in
a #10 can-
There was never a king who banqueted better in youth’s
comradeship.
So much, so much happened around that bridge. An older
me
Stole a kiss or two under it. But can a kiss be stolen
actually if it
Was freely given? Those first were far sweeter than
any shared since.
Time obscures. The boy I was then is still a boy. The
body changes,
The mind remembers what it wants, and it still
wants-fiercely.
The old bridge stands, and though how it stood then is
obscure,
This old boy sees unhindered the life and the times
that flow beneath.
Chip Bergeron
14 June 2004
Comments email:
sbluca@gmail.com
Comment:: Thank you Susan, I appreciate it...
Chip Bergeron on
Newmarket Creativity Center Art & Poems
