The Bridge Builder

This poem arrived in my inbox from an older friend of mine (older than me, but not necessarily "older", if you know what I mean), a fellow member of the youth ministry teams at Holy Comforter. I thought it was a good reminder for us postmodern, baggage-laden, smartypants whippersnappers when we get to thinking how we know so much better than those s-q-u-a-r-e "moderns" and the quaint and irrelevant ways they used to do things.

The Bridge Builder

An old man, going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast, and deep, and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The sullen stream had no fears for him;

But he turned, when safe on the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.

“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim, near,

“You are wasting strength with building here;

Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again must pass this way;
You have crossed the chasm, deep and wide-
Why build you a bridge at the eventide?”

The builder lifted his old gray head:

“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,

“There followeth after me today,
A youth, whose feet must pass this way.

“This chasm, that has been naught to me,
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;

Good friend, I am building the bridge for him.”