An old timbered trestle somehow still spanning

A gorge so deep there's nothing at the bottom;

No river, no place where anyone went and returned,

The trestle hanging on to the hardscrabble flanks

Of two granite hills unredeemed by light or life,

No trees, even weeds have found no purchase.

Nothing to make it memorable but the questions

No one has answered in my lifetime.  Like why

Did such a desolate chasm need to be bridged?

What was so worth getting to on the other side?

Do the screams still echo down in this abyss,

Their bones still breaking into the granite dust?

From a safe distance I have no answers either

For which is more astonishing:  the long train

Of more cars of quarry rock than I can count

Shuddering its way across, or the trembling

Trestle, groaning not with the weight of rocks

But the sheer never-ending burden of empty air.