Hewenden Viaduct
A long drop
as I hover bird-like
between colossus columns
built for the Alpine Railway
to connect textile towns
across Pennine foothills.
Soaring above, stonework
cements stories of travellers
through time, engineers,
bricklayers, masons,
mill workers, farmers,
holiday makers, cyclists,
walkers, trainee cavers.
Hanging halfway between
track and ground, no
means of communication
to above or below I slowly
rotate, head pulled
ever closer to the figure of eight
entwined with captured hair.
Rope held tightly, one hand
plucking, scalping, until
my freed head lifts
into the wind, a relaxed hand
slips me down my first abseil,
a long drop.
by Irene Lofthouse
My name is Eel under this bridge I wait
Do not seek me. I will find you. I await your coming. I am Eel Oro the God of war of blood. I am a thousand years old. under this bridge. I move with care. I see all. I can never die. I hold the secret of eternal life. I have eaten flesh. Now little. Each night I venture out to behold the great Celestial Arch pointing to the great Trench. I will soon join the Long Tide North, leave this Bridge to journey ..die and yes return.
Do not seek me, do not seek me.
Bob Harvey
Sharing Stories
Sharing stories of bridges and ourselves, we found common ground from the outset. Bob’s Eel B ride chimed with my familial ancestry in Ireland. Of midnight raids of rivers, of the byre full of wriggling eels, of young Millie (Mam) having to kill and cook them. Of a river that no longer exists, drained for agriculture, memories of those eels’ fantastic journeys across continents lost forever. My bridge stands, but the migrants who made it have gone, the rails have gone – though travellers come to the ‘Alpine Railway’, some annually like Bob’s eels.
As Mayor of Waitākere for twenty years, I conceived a dream project: for fifteen years a chosen artist, poet or writer picked a local creek or river and designed a crossing. One special bridge on the West Coast was the Eel Bridge at Piha, an ancient link with the Maori Past, the roaring Surf of The Tasman Sea of battles. Into my life came a writing stranger and distant soul traveller with whom I could share my bridge. Her writing set my mind into England: my first days of school where first books were English textbooks; houses and streets; policemen and tidy gardens. A landscape so different from out the window. Like a video I saw her river, the wharves and fishing boats, a land of sea fog and cold. An adventure in a mind’s eye…
Spookily, we have my home town of Bradford in common: Bob’s Grandmother left there about 1901; Mam arrived mid-1950s: both of us from migrant stock in our respective homes.
Serendipity indeed! Who could have predicted that. And ... that we had eels in common too. I'm off to Ely next week, so the connection continues.
serendipity strikes again. Random pairing brings two writers together to share an exchange about bridges and, in the crossing, discover they share a home town. Marvellous