The Bridge of Vanished Hues
Where Thames, a serpent coiled in liquid gray,
Unfurls its rippled hide with sullen sighs,
A figure stands where stone and shadow play.
His cloak, a sail oppressed by winter’s breath,
Clings damply to the gaunt and trembling form
Of Edmund, painter-poet chased by death,
Whose palette mourns the colors of the storm.
Three decades past, this bridge (now slick with years)
Beheld his youth’s fierce ardor, pure and wild—
When ochre dawns dissolved the mist of fears
And every rain-swept cobble seemed a child
Of some celestial sculptor. Here he came
To trap the liquid light in jade and gold,
To duel with shadows, vie with winds for fame,
Before his art grew brittle, frail, and old.
A crumpled missive chills his palsied hand,
Its wax seal cracked like memories long sealed.
The postman found it where the reeds command
Some hidden cove—where Time itself congealed.
“To Edmund Grace, whose brush makes spirits weep”—
The ink, though brown with age, still sings her voice.
He traces letters that the rain would keep,
As thunder chants the epilogue of choice.
*Flashback*: Through veils of silver plummeting down,
A shape emerged—no phantom, yet not real—
Her hair a raven’s wing, her cloak the brown
Of forests drowned in twilight. Still, the feel
Of her gloved hand upon his arm burned true:
“Paint me,” she whispered, “not as flesh, but soul.
Let London’s tears be jewels in my hair’s hue,
And in your art, make my fragmented whole.”
For seven dawns they met where gulls despair,
She posing still as monuments to grief,
While Edmund’s brush (now charged with desperate prayer)
Sought lines no mortal hand could dare relief.
Her face—oh, strangled muse of poets’ throats!—
Not beauty’s blade, but sorrow’s quiet sheath,
With eyes like smoldered letters found in coats
Long buried with their owners underneath.
On the eighth morn, she vanished with the fog,
Leaving wet footprints circling into naught.
His canvas wept—a face half-drawn, a clog
In inspiration’s artery. He fought
To resurrect her from the river’s breast,
Diving in ink and gin’s deceptive balm,
Till critics sneered, “The man once called the best
Now peddles ghosts!” The world grew cold and calm.
*Now*, as his thumb erodes the seal’s crest,
A petal falls—rose, blackened by the years—
Enveloped in the scent of bergamot.
The script cascades like blood from reopened wears:
*”Dear Edmund, on the bridge where art was slain,
I write with hands the fever renders faint.
They say consumption’s kiss leaves little pain—
A lie, like ‘love’ when spoken by a saint.
Forgive my flight; I saw your genius swell
To drown us both in its narcotic tide.
To stay would trap your wings in beauty’s cell—
Great art demands its sacrifices. I died
That you might hunt perfection’s fleeting trace,
Though now I cough the petals of our tree.
Come find me where the willows interlace
With waters deep. No epitaph for me—
Let your lost masterpiece be my farewell.”*
The river claps its hands in grim delight.
He staggers westward where the willows swoon,
Their emerald tears diffusing into night,
As Edmund claws through thorn and bracken cocoon.
There, in the mud—a locket’s fractured heart
Enclosing strands of hair like midnight spun.
Beneath, the river’s pulse begins to part
Revealing ivory limbs, a face undone
By decades of the current’s slow caress.
Her wedding gown (now seaweed’s bleached domain)
Still clings with pearl-encrusted tenderness
To bones that hum a lullaby of rain.
The painter folds himself to earth’s cold cheek,
His tears conducting requiems unheard.
The Thames absorbs the colors that they seek—
Her flesh, his art, become the selfsame word.
When dawn patrolmen find the crumpled cloak,
They curse the drunkard’s plunge, the wasted breath.
No eyes perceive the spectral brushstroke’s stroke—
Two figures waltzing through the bridge of death,
Forever bound in pigments never dried,
Where love and loss in equal measures blend.
The rain keeps writing all they never cried
On stones that neither start nor comprehend.
