Though Halloween has come and gone
the bridge still sports its ghostly sheets,
in place for months now, its four spans
still bearing traffic, still standing guard
over the Caltrans skiff beached nearby.

Come and gone as well are the sunny days
for bridge-painting, but the mystery shroud
(our local Turin) still ripples in sea-winds,
moaning, scouring its piers, and those
of the ghost-trestle just Bayward, bearing
neither trains nor trails over the Slough.

Graffiti flakes, creosote flow like ectoplasm
into the tidally flushed sump, and we wonder
what is to be unveiled?  Surely no workaday
truss of steel, but a frescoed marvel,
our own Golden Gate, if a little green
at the gills.