BRENT KININMONT

Seto Ohashi Bridge

for Sanae

 

We walked until
late afternoon,
looking for leaps

in imagination,
legs straining against 
the trail of hills,

the notebook folded 
into my pocket.
Then, out of the air

in this train 
coming back,
a line writes itself

between islands,
one thought leading
to another,

about the audacity
of steel, say,
how it carries on

over tankers, trawlers, 
that ferry down there –
the one, perhaps,

we had rushed 
to catch, but missed 
the connection.

Brent Kininmont’s poems have appeared in SportLandfallTroutTurbineBest New Zealand Poems 2009, and other places. In 2011 a manuscript of his poetry was short-listed for the Kathleen Grattan Award. He and his family live in Tokyo.

Kininmont comments: ‘The Seto Ohashi connects Honshu and Shikoku, two of Japan's main islands. The bridge is 13 kilometres long, planting its legs in smaller islands as it crosses the Seto Inland Sea.’

Poem source details >

 

Links

Sport 36
Sport 37
Trout 16
Turbine 07
Turbine 11
Best New Zealand Poems 2009