Painting the Ben Franklin Painting the Ben Franklin Morning drowns the red and green glimmering of harbor lights on tugboats hauling merchants to dock, while cobalt runways at the airport fade into sky. Rush hour hasn't ended yet, and I feel the vibration of hundreds of cars in my teeth.
Exhaust rolls from the edge of the bridge, a black mist that falls toward the water and dissipates.
I can't smell the fumes from here, though lower along the guidewires I'd have to breathe through a surgeon's mask. I stand midspan and read graffiti the first coat of blue doesn't quite cover, words scrawled along the walkway, now eroded by ice and rain and unreadable. The remnants of a gull's nest cling to the corner of the girder and walk. Old eggshell fragments spotted brown scatter down and away as I clear the surface. The river, more oily than green, surges against the pylons, a brackish spray and dull roar.