An arc of steel girders and beams spanning over the Chicago River with a bridge tower. The Adams Street bridge is solid, steel and industrial yet hardly visible in between the skyscrapers.
It goes up and down during times of the year to let boats pass. As one of many bridges on the river raising and lowering with the seasons, it sits securely watching over the river and letting traffic and pedestrians cross all day and night.
It makes me think of an old poem dedicated to those skilled workers that have built bridges over rivers and lakes, like the Chicago River and Lake Michigan.
Adams Street Bridge in Chicago
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The Bridge Builder
BY Will Allen Dromgoole
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 fear 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 your strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day,
You never again will pass this way;
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide,
Why build this bridge at evening tide?”
The builder lifted his old gray head;
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followed after me to-day
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been as 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 this bridge for him!”
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