The River Valley Heads
Cross up from the bookshop of clown fish and over the hill three hills away there is the cream bridge clanging out of midnights of ivy and cocoa flower. Walk with your books and your bird cage and your box of music grinding and swinging along and once you have made it up those hills and the bridge hunches over you you get to see the first light of the university of towers and old locked doors on the edge of the dangling river turn. Three generation reach of university share houses growing older and wealthier door frame the bend as it hinges left to Toowong, and desending through the ruff of river valley, stilt house towns crouching upon the maiden hair hillsides, all your memories of late afternoon twilight games of brandy flicker like short films before you.
How you get to the river from here is harder to talk about. Cars parked by the lane sides just heirlooms you won’t inherit. It gets darker and the university further away. The river blackens to a heavy road too thick to cross. You make your way by the headlights craning down Mount Coot-tha lookout west. The river valleys are high Canadian mountains everyone has forgotten about. All the chimneys smoke and it looks colder than you think it is. It reminds you of the mountains in winter when it rained and school was finished. The house next door you would never visit. You keep walking uphill and the hills get smaller as you climb up the taller paths, the bitumen smelling like clothes.