The Poetry Wars! You’ve Got To Love ‘Em, Poets! The Old Or The New Bridge?

Well, Freo Folk all, no sooner had we received and published today a pome from Anon extolling the virtues of retaining the Old Traffic Bridge and calling her Rita, when another noisily clattered into our inbox from yet another Anon – obviously a large and vigorous family of Freo poets – dreaming a different dream, and oding for a New Traffic Bridge!

You’ve really got to love these creative warriors, no?

Has us wondering, though, just how many members there are in the Anon family.

Perhaps a familial rivalry will soon flush out yet another!

Anyway, here’s the latest offering.

Penned with the assistance of a Nobel Prize winning poet.

An Ode to the New Traffic Bridge

(With apologies to Bob Dylan)

I dreamed I saw a Traffic Bridge
As old as you or me
And riddled with the sort of rot
That younger eyes can see
With teredo worm beneath its sleeves
And a coating long since cracked
Searching for a long-lost youth
That no one ever backed.

For this is what the history says
We really wanted Sydney
But as the times got harder
The patching got too fiddly
And in the end we weakened
As our tyres were slowly shredded
And the death of Hampton’s Folly
Was the fate we daily dreaded.

I dreamed I saw a Traffic Bridge
That simply… crossed the Swan
As people truly wanted
Back in 1931
A bridge that will outlive us
A bridge of simple form
And as I walk across it
I’ll thank you Mark McGowan.

ANON