Slap of the screen door, flat knock

of my grandmother's boxy black shoes

on the wooden stoop, the hush and sweep 

of her knob-kneed, cotton-aproned stride 

out to the edge and then, toed in

with a furious twist and heave, 

a bridge that leaps from her hot red hands

and hangs there shining for fifty years

over the mystified chickens, 

over the swaying nettles, the ragweed,

the clay slope down to the creek, 

over the redwing blackbirds in the tops

of the willows, a glorious rainbow

with an empty dishpan swinging at one end.