Dusk at Kintaikyo

THOMAS HALLORAN

(a five-arch footbridge in Western Japan, from 1673) Streetlamps orange the riverfront. The schoolgirls who snapshot chums on the dragon's humps in the afternoon have gone. Once in a while, rising and falling, a dimly lit couple slowly cross on the clattering boards as if that could take centuries. Orienting THOMAS HALLORAN The tulip trees are earning their other name now, are dappled half yellow. A few leaves are browned and falling, as if the marching orders were, be discreet; leave the field of the war against sky and re-form later aground. Our road, Sunday evening, is almost abandoned; the city lights take charge. A helicopter follows the freeway home. Very carefully in my mind, I trace, one to the next, sparse clumps of light along an older, slimmer ribbon crossing under us that time, onto which we turned from the black, starred beyond that still waits oceanward and open-armed. Thomas Halloran lives in California after teaching psychology at US facilities in Asia, and was one of the ten writers featured in the Fall, 1999 issue of The Literary Review. TLR Web home page