The bridge at Aegen’s ford
An angel watches above the cutwater,
where stone cleaves chalk-borne flow through ashlar arches.
A figment angel, river-wrecked,
hand and water carved,
eroded by four hundred winter frosts
to leave the memory of a guardian.
In time beside the pebbled ford,
knapped flint and brick replace Tudor timber,
lichens spread rose, jade, sulphur on moss-creviced walls.
Packhorses, wagons, carts
become vans, lorries, cars that swirl the same dust
as they rumble between ragstone-capped parapets
pinioned by steel staples.
Once silver minnows slipped through my fingers in the shallows
where children still paddle
as an angel watches.
By Sue Young
"Beneath it all"
Beneath it all, wild jasmine, wisteria and convolvulus writhe in a tangle of time.
An ominous construction of concrete and mesh, chassis and planks,
never not ever to be crossed alone, that was the cast iron rule.
Within its mossy shadows hunkered rats, in the stream below furled eels divining their way home.
I know now that their DNA maps them to Tonga’s tepid waters. Back then I feared they’d swarm and smother me, under that flimsy bridge.
If I could see beyond, would I have stayed on the safe side,
where ducklings dawdle midst weedy shallows
beneath it all.
by Jane Berney
Twinned bridges
First we lay the foundations, compare practicalities, identify polarities.
Our meetings span a thirteen hour time gap, Jane sips cranberry juice to start her day while Sue winds hers down with wine. Autumn sunlight pours through one window, across the world the curtains are drawn against the night. Jane plants bulbs to wait out the winter, Sue brings early daffodils from the garden.
Exchanged words are our building bricks, Awa, the river, an angel above, the taniwha below.
We wonder about our bridges and what draws us to them. Is it the bridge’s structure, bound with memory, crossing the ebb and flow of our lives? Between our stories are decades and more than 18,000 kilometres yet we seem to be walking in step, along the same pathway, discovering separately but together. In the absence of Aotearoan crows, distance must be measured as the godwit flies, spanning the globe from south to north.
We create our bridges word by word. Sue, messily, ideas captured in fragments, sliced and rebuilt. Jane with full attention, carving out the space to write.
In the slipstream of our thinking, a transpontine cohesion of ideas: the holistic fragility of the Earth captured in Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, the need to protect the rivers that flow beneath our bridges. Jane tells of the Whanganui, the first river worldwide to be given legal personhood. The catalyst for similar conversations in England and around the world. We swap more book titles and grow our souls.
In Jane’s garden, a single daffodil breaks through the earth.
Sue & Jane
"Between our stories are decades and more than 18,000 kilometres yet we seem to be walking in step, along the same pathway, discovering separately but together."
A sentence that says much about the whole Twinned Bridges project - thank you all, it's been a joy
Beautiful weaving together of seasons, times and experiences in this essay and the poems and their bridges which carry so much life and memory.