Chain of Rocks

It's a footpath now
and I've never seen it, but living
here even in this diminished capacity
for walking, I'd like to walk it one day
just to the place where it bends and look
around. There's ample water in the
Mississippi there, though it's shallow
and an extra channel had to be dug
nearby for the barges on account of
the rocks -- I've seen photographs
but I'd like to take my own, Arch and
cityscape to the south, picturesque
Musial bridge to the north, old water
intakes for the city jutting up nearby.
I wonder if I'd be queasy like that time
not long ago at the Rio Grande gorge near
Taos when I couldn't get my eighty year old
bones to manage a walk past the edge.
I'd been braver years before at twenty
something over the Royal Gorge when
the tour bus stopped mid bridge
and I got out and stood there wearing
my brand new Alligator trench coat
in a snowstorm.