Bridge over troubled water

I cant think of how many times during the day I'd hop over a freeway pass or two. Never thought twice about any of those bridges. Underlying still waters notwithstanding. So as I read horrendous story after story about people trapped and hurt and affected by last weeks Minnesota bridge collapse, my heart goes out to them.
These were normal people quite like you and me, who were on their way back from work, picking up kids from school, out to fish ..just doing their everyday activities until the world stood still for them.
How easily did that big block of concrete and rock seem to crumble.And now - amidst the debris and shattered lives, it doesn't seem to be a fraction of the imposing structure it once was, helping people cross over deep waters and ultimately plunging into those very depths.
I cant help but wonder - especially tonight after a 13 hour day as I lie in bed, typing this about the bridges that we as human beings spend our lives trying to build. Yet sometimes -words or lack thereof, actions and experiences shatter them.
We either jump off them or are pushed off them ,break them with our stupidity or watch as others burn them with theirs.
The hard part is that those damm bridges take years to build and only moments to destroy. And ironically, the world being round even when we think we might be okay since we've crossed some of them -we're really not.
So what do we do - well firstly someone said that if you're going to burn a bridge you better be a darn good swimmer. So we learn to swim - and drink lots of saline water and fend sharks until we learn to build again...and we keep repeating this - Until we finally learn that even swimming with life jackets takes its toll - and the only way to really move forward is to build a bridge again and only pray that this one outlives its predecessors.

Singing off with one of my all time favorite favorite poems-

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-
That sullen stream had no fears for him;
But he turned, when he reached the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.

"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim near,
"You are wasting strength in 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 the 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."

WILL ALLEN DROMGOOLE