From Birkenhead Bridge

Memory still walks along the river on a summer's evening when a soft wind lingers over the mangroves and lifts the smell of mud rimmed along the river's edge into the warm air. I imagine mulloway prowling the deep channels dug out by the tides, the shiny backs of dolphins arching through the dark, sewing together the torn dreams of old men. I can feel the thick flow of its history and cough the accumulations of a century's waste. From Birkenhead Bridge I look out over the river's wide reach, its distances and into the vanishing point of a waiting silence.