Expansion Joint

Forty minutes of suspension.

The river is a gray, flat plate

six hundred feet below the tires.

The girders groan under the weight.

Traffic stalls at the third pylon.

I see a dandelion, starved and thin,

poking out of a crack in the concrete

where the salt and the rain get in.

A semi-truck blasts the left lane,

shaking the frame of the car.

I grip the wheel and feel the steel

trying to stay where we are.