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 Sport, Landfall, Trout, Turbine, Best 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.’
Links
Sport 36
Sport 37
Trout 16
Turbine 07
Turbine 11
Best New Zealand Poems 2009