TWO GHOSTS & THE DIESEL CROW CHOIR

Black highway, reflective
"1" & the moon exchanged stares
across truckless distances of space.

Me - four hours standing, just past the bridge
dropped off
from a country town lust adventure, getting late
hitching south back
to the Old Big Smoke.

Past 11, past 12.
North coast cold rose up as if
the river below was shedding a frozen skin/
like it was throwing out a net of itself
to catch a night-stunned world.

& out of that mist came two women.

I'd been dancing on the spot, singing to an emptiness
in that free solitude.
Staying warm too,
part of a truth.

Straight dissection of road
up to the bridge. The following dip
had become a reprehensible welcome mat.
No traffic for almost 30 minutes &
no nibble for hours not
even a hesitation before the gush of passing air,
eruption of roadstone.

Then these two
distinct beneath moon, one
in a long dress, other in jeans they
ambled across the bridge, occasionally leant into touching…
shared secrets, drunken bump suggesting
history & trust.

There was an unease to the picture, as
though the road was suddenly crowded, some
blueprint ignored to see three people
loose in this isolation & time.

Putting down the mild hysteria of waiting
I called out welcome, moved towards them.

In the distance
a turpentine smudge of light grew
to the conflagration of hi-beam
& the diesel crow-choir howled
as a truck became a cannon
& the valley was scoured in panicked shadow.

Revealing an empty bridge.

Five times those women walked -
not once made it past that long concrete-bone bridge
before vanishing under headlights.

Did they have a story?
Bodies that also never passed this creek,
perhaps one night flesh too was pierced by light
as the formwork pavement gave way to weeds & sand
on this bitter highway.

How much pain to glue you to the tarmac
beyond even life?
Did they hear me call out,
consider this man with his bag edging closer
or was all this entirely locked within themselves,
an audience meaning nothing?

I jumped like a flea through the hours.
Trapped
between these repeating visions
& the echoes of earlier gropings at the local cemetery,
the contact for both so
hungrily sought &
the provision in the end of no sustenance. We are
wrapped in low country urges, impassable moments
repeated across time.

Still the night tinted waves of grass
one beaten gum & moon.
Heartfelt
on asphalt               around 5 a salesman pulled up.
I had a story to tell & told it hungrily;
as though this needed to be out,
quickly reduced to
words & the artificial spookiness of a shared commentary.

He was called Bob, I think, suggested stopping at a cafe...
barely 6 kilometres
the woman there serving no-nonsense
as the thick brewed black on dawn-formica morning
did it all...

Moon-ridden,
fragments of me were still waiting
for those thieving headlights.

Shaky hands & swollen oyster eyes
reached back again
to the bridge,
to the endless wander of two women
caught forever on a river's cold hook. 

from Stories of the Feet (Five Islands, 2004)