Pattullo Bridge

Fire shuts Pattullo (Pa-tu'-lo) Bridge. Vancouver Sun headline.


For seventy years the Pattullo delivers cars
across the Fraser between Surrey and New Westminster.
Seventy years of bootleggers, fishermen, accountants,
and marine biologists expect the Pattullo.

Years of potholes, chipped paint, blizzards,
high water, ice and arctic winds,
and the Pattullo delivers cars and shelters drifters.
And when the Pattullo endures fire and smoke

it's abandoned by the bootleggers, fishermen,
accountants, and marine biologists.
Not a pedestrian with two kids and a dog,
not a bicycle, not a drifter saves it

from the flame, and the Skytrain delivers bootleggers
across the Fraser between Surrey and New Westminster.