THE JOKE ON THE BRIDGE is about being young and having fun at any age and being old at the other end...still funny, after all these years....

THE JOKE ON THE BRIDGE

when we were very young people, in our teens, you would clown around. people loved you for that. the other kids in your high school and in mine found you delightful and funny. charming, really....
you would charm us with your funny faces and with your slapstick and your surprises - your twists of fate that would break us all into pieces of laughter. your excess of fun. it went with your music. you were full of music. it was what you did from morning to night. you made fun. you made music. I would thrill with your music. I would laugh with your jokes. you would laugh first. you found your self very funny..."I crack myself up". you have always said that. it's true. you crack my self up too. you are full of joy and full of music. you were also full of love. you have always been full of love. so love. music. joy. this is who you are. you're one of a kind. a person so complete with sense of self. you can survive deprivations of music. somehow. not well. but somehow. you can survive deprivations of love. very poorly. but somehow. but you cannot live without the fun. the spirit of joy in you. when you put all three together: the joy. the music. the love: you have you: total.
I would not - I could never put you down in any way. not for the music. not for the love. not for the joy. you are all a man should be - for me. from you strengths come your weaknesses of course. you have so much music within you. it is hard for you to accept mediocrity in music in any way. intolerant of the imperfect in music. there can be so much mediocre in music... and, you have turned at times to sex just for entertainment. because sex with love was so rare in your life...
but you cannot live without the fun - and you haven't. you've looked for it in everything around you. you have found the either/or of the politics of life. find it hard to find the machinations of people in power funny at all. if you ever did. it is harder for you to see your powerlessness in the face of these dividing powerful people and not take sides. I have been hurt less by them. I am not able to take sides so easily. I have to respect you though. for your stubborn positions in the face of division. your passion for what you believe is right. but even more: I respect your humor in the face of your pessimism about how this world is 'going' now... the fun twists of your mind that invent and are delighted and are dismayed and are struck in wonder at the amazing ways this world goes on. you continue to crack yourself up. you continue to crack me up.
there is a photograph of us. age eighteen or so. vignette of who were were. who we are. you are telling me a joke. or have just finished the joke... we have love in our eyes. it comes right through. strong. very happy. you are laughing at your joke of course. laughing as you crack yourself up. I have the rueful laugh of a woman who is always delighted with jokes that are exactly like the one you told. that only you can tell. that only you can bring out of her: that laugh. the one that is wound around your heart like an embrace. I have the look of a woman who must love you for your whole life. no matter what happens. must follow your music. is charmed by your music. must laugh at your jokes. because only you make me laugh like that. only you have always made me laugh like that. hear music like that. love like that. because you touch me and make me love like that...
you may tell your jokes on every bridge of every river we cross and paddle and travel upon. I will always laugh in delight. you are delightful for me. to me. I delight in you. and always will. you know that in your bones. I know that in my bones...the picture of the joke on the bridge tells the truth. takes our childish laughter by surprise. we are there again. young. vulnerable. invulnerable in our love...

we are there again. no one can take all that music. all that love. all that joy away.
not ever again.