With tennis lesson suspended this winter school term as Master T. has been skiing at Winter School, I've missed my weekly visits and subsequent postings from Keirle Park. A reminder came in September, in the June 2011 issue of Antipodes, a USA journal that features Australian literature, which published my poem 'Water Under the Bridge' - an observation of Manly Lagoon.
Water Under the Bridge
November, late afternoon, the lagoon
double-dinks its load of light and water
under Queenscliff
Bridge, condensing
its tessellations where the current squeezes
round the pylons; it’s traveling under, out,
digging greener beds and purling
round a brown and upright stick, over
the filamental green superannuated shells.
Then radiating around the canter-
lopping, high-stepping setter that circles
in his feathered wet and prancing joy,
it slides east, past the shadow
of the bridge, nips out the inlet’s
quicker deeper breach into the surf,
laps the feet of the man who zips
himself into a Short Tom, kicks out
as salt spray across the face of waves,
it paves a gully ramp for the kite-boarder
who half sails, half flies; runs sweet
on its dispersing ways.
CONVERSATION