The Girl on the Bridge
I saw you but you didn’t see me
At the bridge on the Ringwood road
Crushed insect squashed against railings
Between two yellow-vested police.
Caught a glimpse of your Tuesday misery
Of someone bent from a heavy load
Perhaps reflecting on some of her failings
To the point where there’s just one release.
I’ll catch you again somewhere one day
And be of more use to you then
As the lesson you taught me last Tuesday
Spreads its teaching like clouds do the rain
I sensed the police talked you down
Your heart now dried of tears
And you sat, sad, hunched and broken
Your body limp, riddled with fears.
Driving through I thought I might
Stop, park up in a lay-by nearby,
Enter your life as a white knight
Mop up the stale tears you had cried
But I drove past, fickle and hell-bent
Realised my narcissist’s response
Understood my need was dominant
Over your reed-like circumstance
I’ll catch you again somewhere one day
And be of more use to you then
As the lesson you taught me last Tuesday
Spreads its teaching like clouds do the rain
Bending in the gale of your emotions
Close to breaking but still hanging on,
I believed you’d survive and grow stronger
Your roots in your river now deeper.
I wanted to tell you you’d helped me
That your crisis had been my crisis too
But then everyday things allowed me
To allow you to drop out of view
I’ll catch you again somewhere one day
And will be of more use to you then
As the lesson you taught me last Tuesday
Spreads its teaching like clouds do the rain.
Parental Injunctions
I need to break free, they’ve all told me all my life—
the poet, the counsellor, the friend, the wife
break free from those injunctions
with which your parents embalmed you
break free from the influences used to becalm you,
frozen stone masquerading as wet, clinging clay
put there to ”help form you, have you learn to obey.”
Mercury told us clearly, oh!
he screamed it from the radio
“Break free, I want to break free.”
Why has it taken so long
to be alive?
The first time I heard I heard that song
was in 1985.
* * *