I live in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where one of our mile long suspension bridges is undergoing a redecking in an operation called The Big Lift. They are essentially replacing the bridge piece by piece at night and some weekends. It began last June and will continue until at least December 2016.
In redecking the bridge, the running lane across the bridge that I often use was also taken away. I’m also not a fan of taking the ferry compared to the buses because it is more inconvenient and time consuming. But life is what you make of it, right? So instead of just putting up with all this, I decided to do something to make the best of it.
Last September, I came up with an idea that any time I had to take the ferry to go between Halifax and Dartmouth that the bridge connects, I would commit the ferry time to compose poetry. Not going much during winter, I figured I wasn’t going to get more than 99 written, so I numbered them with two digits. So far, it seems that was a bad decision has I have already written 23, averaging between two and three per trip as they tend to be short poems. At that rate, next summer alone should see a couple hundred written! I’ll have to figure out what to do with this number, like renumbering while I still can correct past posts. Most poems written so far are haiku , with the rest being tanka and general one stanza poems with some rhyme scheme involved. They are rarely about the Big Lift operation itself, though. If they were, I wouldn’t bother telling you about it. 🙂
If you like short poetry, including those forced by circumstance, please do head over to see my Big Lift Ferry Poems collection. I don’t think anybody else is doing such a thing. Too bad most people in the area don’t know much about it, either. I don’t promote my poetry much so it’s like one of those hidden anonymous poetry collections. I’m quite OK with that, but sometimes, I don’t mind writing something about it that gets me excited. 🙂
Digital Citizen 