Book of the Week – waking on the bridge by Martin Shea

Martin Shea’s waking on the bridge moves through urban and coastal spaces with equal ease. Born in New York City and long involved in both writing and theatre, Shea brings a strong sense of placement to his haiku. The poems focus on bridges, trains, shorelines, windows, and thresholds, spaces that suspend us between one state and another.

Early in the book, absence is introduced without elaboration:

visiting the house
less of her there
autumn

The reduction in the second line performs subtle emotional work. “Less of her” is not a declaration of loss but a recognition of diminished presence. Autumn reinforces this subtraction without sentimentality. The season does not mirror grief; it normalises it. Shea trusts juxtaposition rather than explanation.

Urban surfaces carry memory as well. In:

old paintdrops
on the rusted fire escape-
summer rain

the image layers time. Paintdrops suggest past labour, the rust marks slow decay, and the summer rain briefly renews what cannot be restored. The dash creates a pause that allows the reader to feel the rain as it arrives. Nothing dramatic happens; yet the poem maintains a tension between erosion and continuation.

Movement and suspension converge in one of the book’s central poems:

waking at night
in a train on a bridge-
snow falling-

This is a poem of layered thresholds. Night is a temporal crossing; waking interrupts sleep; the train moves while the bridge holds; snow falls while everything else is in motion. The double dashes suspend the scene midair. The reader inhabits a brief, weightless interval.

Midway through reading, consider this: do these poems feel more rooted in city architecture or in natural open spaces? Shea repeatedly blurs the line.

tide’s far sound . . .
the stars have come in again
to lie among the stones

The ellipsis creates acoustic distance. “Far sound” becomes a tactile presence. When the stars “lie among the stones,” vertical space collapses, with the sky brought down to the shoreline. The poem enacts a quiet inversion, drawing the cosmos within reach without spectacle.

The book closes with a distilled image:

terminal.
one far off and
perfect moon

The single-word first line has multiple meanings: train station, airport gate, ending. Against this finality stands the “perfect moon,” distant yet intact. The contrast does not lead to comfort. It contains both distance and completion within the same frame.

waking on the bridge is a book of crossings. Shea rarely announces transition; he places us within it. Bridges, trains, tides, moons; each poem occupies the moment before arrival. In that suspension, clarity sharpens.

You can read the entire collection in the THF Digital Library. As you explore it, notice which thresholds linger longest.

Do you have a full-length or chapbook-length book published in 2021 or earlier that you would like featured as a Book of the Week? Contact us for details. Haiku featured in the Book of the Week Archive are selected by the THF Digital Librarian, Vidya Premkumar and are used with permission.