Dawn on a Highway

Turning, a crunch under rubber.

The indicator flickers out,

like dying kindling.

I clutch up a gear:

quietness.

The moonlight drapes its last ribbon,

shortening a sombre grey.

The sun peeks through ragged leaves.

It gleams in the rearview mirror,

a drop of water

revealing a hidden web.

Shadows flow, a translucent blanket.

Briefly masked, a bridge swallows the morning

beyond a stretch of empty road.

The wind plays its lonely voice.

A thin sheet of tar,

the carcass of a wallaby, spread.

Tate Legge

My Father’s Bike Shed: A Hobby Passes

Overgrown branches on the corrugated roof;

they’re old men, grunting and cramping in a gust.

Distant barking at the sun’s final heave.

Colour wrung from the sky.

Bike frames hang like drying pelts,

a medley of tarnished chrome.

A jacket of dust, ‘round lidless jars

and air sombre with grease.

Lone gloves lie with the scroggin of screws:

stale washers, sour nuts,

nameless scraps, brittle and decayed.

Not a nod of a wheel or a click of a chain:

a theme park that ran out of funding.

Knife making seems to be the rage now

as metal fillets wait in the breath of a lamp.

Abbey Clark

Waitress

A billow of warm air sweeps past.

I step through the door,

the cold morning slammed out behind me.

Wafts of coffee and dish soap.

I tie a bow around my waist

like a leash,

slip a pen into my back pocket.

The sloshing of the dish washer.

I grab the handle,

push it down.

My arm is tense.

Patches of light, dappled about,

waltz across the floor,

changing shape with the step of every greasy shoe.

Faces come and go,

both pulled and sagged,

masked,

like icing on a cake,

covering the rough edges.

Charlotte Hinds