Maverick Mist

Hymn to Iris
Alice Oswald

Quick moving goddess of the rainbow
You whose being is only an afterglow of a passing-through

Put your hands
Put your heaven-taken shape down
On the ground. Now. Anywhere

Like a bent- down bough of nothing
A bridge built out of the linked cells of thin air

And let there be instantly in its underlight –
At street corners, on swings, out of car windows –
A three-moment blessing for all bridges

May impossible rifts be often delicately crossed
By bridges of two thrown ropes or one dropped plank

May the unfixed forms of water be warily leaned over
On flexible high bridges, huge iron sketches of the mathematics of strain
And bridges of see-through stone, the living-space of drips and echoes

May two fields be bridged by a stile
And two hearts by the tilting footbridge of a glanceRichard 

And may I often wake on the broken bridge of a word,
Like in the wind the trace of a web. Tethered to nothing

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