Passage

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.

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‘Passage’ was published in The Tiger Moth Review Issue 5, January 2021.

Photo credit: Gen Saratani, www.urushi.info/kintsugi