Gail Anderson, Oxfordshire, UK
This old bridge brings him from the river:
rough sleeper, sun-razored and eddying
into the market square
where headbent victory holds a scroll,
extends towards earth her laurel wreath,
this drifter cadges
black Costa coffee, a cigarette,
watches from a bench
lycra cyclists click in and fly, starlings.
He is a no-brakes man
all downs and dip-slopes,
river flows and passages, paused
before the florist’s window,
clipped anemones bright below a gable
(where life hung
over a tipped chair
one Sunday last spring,
coursed away as bells rang
changes) he knows incision:
as a river cuts shore from shore,
staircasing to sea,
as bronze cries verdigris
over dead names on a plinth,
as a mind flips to madness, bud-snipped
histories spun to edgelands,
seeped to gravel beds,
not lost exactly, but hidden;
divergence heels him
back to the river, marking the fallen
leaves of autumn,
back to that first bridge
arching storied waters still
in the making.
Gail Anderson writes about water, nature and place. Recent work appears in Mslexia, Ambit, Crannog, Strix and The Cabinet of Heed. She can usually be found in her boat on the River Thames.