The Architecture of Rust

Iron flakes away like winter snow, unhurried in its quiet dissolution, the heavy girder settling into brown earth, forgetting the shape of the bridge.

We wrought these spans expecting permanence, but the damp wind carries the dust of empires, leaving only the skeleton's copper-hued shadow to measure the arch of the dying sun.

Even the proudest beams eventually surrender, a slow, silent dialogue with rain and salt air, until the structure releases its memory of tension, and returns to the soft, unshaped ground.