Crossing Eternity Bridge

I have just started the walk on Eternity Bridge – my favorite haunt,
Coarseness of world softens in the folds of the surrounding celestial scenery,
Something overtakes my loneliness and makes me come closer to completion with myself,
My long struggle with existence melts like snowflakes in the first rays of sun.
I am walking like a circus stuntman on a high-wire on Eternity Bridge:
A quarter-mile long suspension bridge connecting the two points of Sommasan mountain range at 5,000 ft.,
Spanning a wide and beautifully dreadful crater chasm 3,000 feet below,
As long as one does not look below the bridge it is ethereally intoxicating,
The eerie stance of the bridge makes one both drunk with euphoria and zany with fear,
The mountainscape’s mystic pregnancy is meditating in the supine arms of nature.
My walk unfolds like a half-conscious dream,
There is an eternal serenity encompassing every atom above the bridge,
But below it the chasm spreads a web of fear and doom,
As I walk I am unable to focus fully on the scene above the bridge,
As the vision of the scene below disturbs that grandeur,
In the struggle between the two I slipped from the walking-path and
Found myself hanging precariously from the steel ropes of the bridge-deck,
But am able to support myself tenuously by the steel beams but unable to climb back on the deck,
I am waiting for someone walking on the bridge to rescue me,
Pull me out from the jaws of death and place me unto the road of life again.

As I hang between life and death I have never wanted to live more as I do now,
I feel a new vision rushing to me:
We do not know what is precious in life and what is dross,
In life illusions abound while its essence remain stubbornly concealed,
As if by a malicious design of nature,
If we could minimize the intrusion of world in our lives we could regain our pristine vision,
And walk through life with a serenely glowing spirit,
I realize now that my present precarious balance between life and death
Has always been present in my life: hidden in a different form under the veneer of everyday durable life,
With my new understanding the journey of my life could be enhanced,
But I do not know if I can first survive my present calamity,
It is a supreme mystery and irony that life scintillates with an enigmatic beauty when it is close to its end.

Suffern, New York, 5.10.2011
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