Watching the Bridge
Andrew Leggett
A smudge on the line
between bridge and sky,
another semi-trailer thunders.
Light breaks the storm.
Each end of the bridge
is the start of a rainbow.
No one looks at the hill
where the dead lie,
in the midfield of vision.
Swaying eucalypts whisper
names razed from stones
in the garden of immanence.
Lorikeets fight a single finch
over nectar in the stellate flowers
of the umbrella.
This humid afternoon
sheds its musty kimono.
I stand and shiver
in my black speedos,
inspecting bonsai
in a tub of pebbles.
It has rained
on the crush of lilies
sprayed with citronella.
A puddle dries,
exposing fossil ferns.
Evolution slows during peak hour.
In a storm,
when I am gone,
another semi-trailer thunders.
No shag on the hunt,
nor squid’s eye in the bay,
could capture this on film.
Andrew Leggett is an Australian writer of poetry, fiction and interdisciplinary academic papers. He holds a research Masters degree in creative writing from the University of Queensland and a PhD in creative writing from Griffith University. His poetry collections Old Time Religion and other Poems (1998) and Dark Husk of Beauty (2006) were published by Interactive Press. He was the editor of Australasian Journal of Psychotherapy from 2006-2011. He is the prose editor of StylusLit.com.
