What a wind whipped all through the night. I thought I wouldn’t be able to walk, there was a howl and swooshing of branches all night outside my window. I woke early and tried to rest but the wind unsettled me. After I rose, after the morning light, it calmed and the trees stilled, and I realized it was fine to go into the woods after all and be under the trees. So, off we went into the return of the cold, the renewal of the thinnest layer of ice on the brook and in the wetlands. What I saw was the sun beaming toward me from the railroad trestle bridge, and this lovely poem I found later and fell under its spell and wondered what wish I will wish as I cross:

Spell of the Bridge

Helen Lamb

Hold the wish on your tongue
As you cross
What the bridge cannot hear
Cannot fall

For the river would carry
Your hopes to the sea
To the net of a stranger
To the silt bed of dreams

Hold the wish on your tongue
As you cross
And on the far side
Let the wish go first

from The Thing That Mattered Most (Black & White / Scottish Poetry Library, 2006)