We call her Oma.
She’s a simple, old, haggard wooden bridge
In my neighbourhood,
On the shaved navel of the forest, heavy and solemn,
With the colour of an aged, wizened python,
Spotted here and there and striped there and then.
So ramshackle, but friendly, cosy to the naked feet,
With that royal smell of wood-cellar combined with
The health of ancient wine.
Nothing more . . . .
Oh, I forgot to announce that her bolts are worn with the disease of rain;
Each log of her timber derelict with the scourge of summer sun;
All her nuts frazzled by mildews and the collection of time;
Her beams drying fast with autumnal leaf-paralysis.
She’s been battered through conflicts and by the many strong-willed feet
That have traversed her, naked and booted, year after year, strife after strife.
But she remains steadfast and bestrides a poor, kind, whistling stream which
Rushes gently with native scents whenever the moon rules over the tides,
As always, when its prime ripens, like the tropical palm fronds.
But Oma, in all her splendid poverty, stands elevated,
Tall and proud, and with the accoutrements of Nimrod’s tower.
And from that creaking, wobbling height,
We observe the moon clearer —in all shapes and nomenclatures —
Full moon, super moon, blood moon. . . .
And the eclipses — partial, full, rounded, lunar, solar —
Sweeter sighting when distant leaves of floating ferns hide
The effulgence little by little, the nearby copses on revelling
Valleys renewing sways from across glimmering horizons.

Hasten not and call her an observatory.
Our neighbourhood repulses clichés and touches them with
The tip of a wand.
She is our dear old bridge —our heritage site —
On whom we stand and stretch our hands and feel the moon.