Span
By Helen Ramoutsaki
Across the road,
above speed bumps,
embarked on trunks
like tensed rigging
roping a course,
a plait is placed
so possums slip
the sheet from
canopy
to
canopy
garden
to
forest
each safe arbour
all the same when
leaf vanes show
how the wind blows.
Between viridian
flows of frond
and a crow’s nest fern
a gilded line catches
fused foliage floating
out in open water
colours streaming
around the silk-sail
weighting Nephila
hanging hungry as
sucking saplings,
eight striped leggings
anchoring in shoals as
hidden as bommies are —
but to the practiced eye
of the deftly tacking
coralline dragonfly.
Today, as you drift,
these won’t be signed,
these secret spans,
enduring and ephemeral
across my straits of vision —
for whenever we glimpse
their brief break of edge
merged, each bridge,
a thread, stretches
the tide back, swelling
the hours we are allowed
until the gangway gate
closes behind.
This poem was created during a workshop with New Shoots: Cairns Botanic Gardens