Notes

I tramp through the wet grass
my feet leaving impressions with a cold crunch.
It’s winter and the sky is clean.
The early sun is just piercing through the gums
whose tall bodies now line this plot.
My bark-coloured skin pimples with cold
her white cheeks are bitten red.

‘How much further?’
she asks me;
‘my feet are all wet.’
I hear her boots trudge to stand beside me.
We are now on a hilltop that stands prominent as a breast
in the voluptuous landscape.
‘Not much’
I say.

Past the gums the grass grows longer.
We weave through it like fingers through hair.
I see a fence that must mark the end of the plot.
Noticing us, a rabbit on the other side bounds away.
‘This is it?’
‘Yep’
I answer, unsure if it is the correct one to give.
She looks out at the vast body of land
as if trying to divine answers or appreciation.
I do the same.

‘How much?’
I ask, gesturing to the fence.
‘Nearly eighteen-hundred.’
Age, value –
neither of us knew what the other was referring to.

I nod.
‘Good’
I say,
‘Thanks.’
I make to walk back, but she stops me.
‘No. Thank you.’
I walk on back toward the tree-topped hill.
‘Wait – ‘
she calls to me
‘isn’t there some sort of story you people have?’
She’s not wrong. There should be
but if there is one I don’t know about it.
‘Have to ask my grandmother’
I tell her
‘she’s the one who remembers all that.’
It was she who had told me it was out this way, and I just happened to be passing through.
I walk on in silence.
It isn’t until I reach the trees that I hear her make to join me
as though in that short time something important had hit her.
‘Any memories of this place, like growing up and stuff?’
‘Nah. Long time ago now’
I say.
‘Sorta lost the plot, if you know what I mean.’
She laughs at this and I smile to acknowledge the joke
but inwardly, it hurts like revelation.

When the house is in sight again
she tells me her story.
‘My dad had an apple orchard there’,
she says, pointing west, sharp as a sailor.
‘He threatened to sell the place when the Depression hit’,
she says
‘but Mum wouldn’t let him. Nearly lost the plot over it, she did’
she says
‘Couldn’t say goodbye to a place like this one. It’s home, you know?’

I climb into the car to the relief of my waiting children.
‘Finally’
my son groans
‘What were you doing in there?’
‘Just grown-up stuff’
I say.
My daughter yawns
‘Let’s go home now.’

As I drive back toward the city
passing the nude, blonde fields, blue-eyed with dams
I consider the kindness of strangers showing me their plots.
She had wanted something simple in return. Her words came back to me.
I swerve and the children reprimand me.
I feel empty
ungrateful somehow
that I have no plot to share with her.

I wish
to be anywhere
but here.

I wish
that I had no concrete cage
and no minefields
and no cruel wire.

I wish
that I could look out my window
and not be able to see
where I wish to be.
I can see them from my window,
freedoms and all -
sunny backyards with children playing liberally,
couples in love sipping American soda,
pet dogs, with tails all a-wag, running where they please
It’s a painting:
the blue sky,
the green grass,
the pink in their blushes.
They are happy and unrestrained.

I wish the Moon well.
She hangs there, in her snare of stars
in the dark between East and West,
and she can see and hear everything:
it barks. It rattles. It traps.
And those terrible men
their handsome faces twisted into Gestapo glares
patrolling and wounding beneath her crater-eyes.
At least I can close mine.
I wish she had that choice.

And as for the Sun
he doesn’t know how lucky he is.
He jimmies my eyes open to see this godforsaken place
and then I must watch him defect
to set in a better place.
I wish him gute Reise
bon voyage
and good riddance.

But I should be sorry for the Sun.
He has no wish to be roused
and then to brave the border
and then to be told to sit back down again.
He has to take orders,
just like the Moon and me
But O -
how I wish I were him.

I wish to be anywhere but here.
I wish that I had no minefields
and no westward window
and no Gestapo glares.
I wish for freedom
because in a place like this
wishing
is my only freedom.

I never could say enn oh.
The brutal honesty of the N
and its resonance in the O
rings too harshly
for the gentle mouth
of someone gentle like me.

It was easy for you to say.
Its rough conviction
and your rough hands
against my soft ones,
enn oh’s brutal honesty
seemed to suit a brute like you.

The softest thing you gave me
is a tender-to-touch bruise
a strong, hard shade of blue.
The hardest thing to do
is to keep that bruise from hardening
into something looking like hatred.

Hatred is red like the scar you had
a hot bloody red that stains
Not like the red of love -
not that silk-soft scarlet -
the same as my old rosy lenses
I wore the day I met you.
You looked soft because of that scar.
I went soft because of that scar.

Your hate-red scars
worse than my own
so hard, and they made you so blue
You were a shade of too-blue.
Much too blue to be true.
I found your tube of lipstick
you used to colour yourself
that dishonest hate-red colour.

It was then that I saw your true colours.
When your gentle hand did brutal things
after I had said enn oh
I felt a burn, red-hot poker:
the seering smear of your lipstick
trying to bruise me blue.

Now I’m a weak tinge of blue.
It stained and won’t come clear.
I was firm, but honest with you.
I said enn oh to you.

I was much to soft on you.

My bruise is rock-hard, black-blue
for you, now.
Those glasses are broken, and – praise God! I can see!
Cured of colourblindness
and I owe it to you,
a dipstick with lipstick
and a hate-red heart,
you and your blue-black, hate-red heart
for now I can say it:
NO.

I am a fickle woman
This I do not hide
If you’re hopeful, or just curious,
You’ll find out more inside.

I don’t really want a baker
He’s not the money maker
Nor do I want the butcher
He’s not really much of a looker

I’ve never been fond of a match-maker
He makes a better match-breaker
I don’t care much for bankers
They’re all, frankly,
idiots.

And as for the lawyer or solicitor
He’d only, at best, be a visitor
On the other hand, the barrister
I’ve always thought him quite sinister

The commonest of common accoutants
Give me boredom in abundance
Then again, the stealer
Is not very much an appealer

To me, the teacher educational
Seems much to much emotional
However, the sensitive poet
Would hardly ever show it.

My demands are many, I know
But I do have somethng in mind
If you would simply read on
I would think you rather kind

I want a man who is tall
But sometimes twice as small
A man with very fine taste
Who doesnot like to make haste
Someonewho is always tere
But could, just as easily, be anywhere
A man who will let me be free
But -
only if I can’t have Paul McCartney.

Peeler in one hand, spud in the other
I scrape at the soft, slippery
earthy vegetable.

I have been doing this for years.
But I’m not quite as good as Mum.
With a few flicks of the peeler, the flesh is gone
leaving a wet, faceted sphere in her rough palm.

Of course, Mum learned from the best.
My Gran could peel a spud in fifteen seconds flat.
She would boil them,
each yellow ball falling in with a plonk
and dancing beneath the surface.
They didn’t like to be covered –
they would rattle the saucepan lid
and spill starchy foam on the stove.
“Whoops!”

By gee, she could boil the best tatties.
I would demand her company and her potatoes,
with a square of butter and a teaspoon,
the earth-scented steam wetting my face.

Looking down at my own peeling job
I reckon I couldn’t hold a candle to those women:
knobbly. Stripy. Haven’t cut the sprouts off.

I’m sure Mum and Gran needed practice too.

You know you’re at home when the dirt is good.

The best dirt is red, like an evening sky
yellow, like the sun
and black, like we are.

Good dirt has to feel a certain way.
It is cool, moist,
and cradles your bare foot
as you sink a little way in.

Good dirt attaches you somewhere.
With a watery whisper, your footprint is there
sealing your soul in the soft, gentle, ochre earth,
bringing you home to your people,
your stories,
your place.

You can’t sink your feet into concrete.
Concrete is whitish and doesn’t cradle your foot.
It smothers the good dirt.
No more people.
No more stories.
No more place.

My people value the land, as yours do,
but you will never hear my people say do-I-hear-two-million.
No.
The value is
how far into the good dirt
your bare foot sinks.

A trip away from the city is purifying
like good clean smoke.
That’s where there’s good crisp air, and good green grass;
and when the yellow sun pours itself out of the red sky
there’s real country darkness – good dark black.

The wise women of my people always told me
that a good life needs people,
stories,
and place.
You know you’re at home, they told me,
when the people, stories and place
are grounded firmly
in good dirt.
Real good dirt.

It has been well over a year since my lasy post. Readng over the posts, I see that my poetry has evolved during that time, and thank the non-existant Lord for that.

My reason for taking my time is studies (do I detect a “what, an excuse for studying!?” from any of you?). I’ve just completed my final school year and my HSC. As part of one of the courses, English Extension 2, I had to complete a major project of any chosen medium and I, ever the poet, chose to write a suite of poems. I may or may not publish this online when the Board of Studies hands it back.

More news that no one will read: it occurred to me three seconds ago that I have very few readers. I have been toying for sme time with the idea of establishing a presence on Facebook; then I will have three online outlets for my vers libre rants and moping.

Here is a poem I wrote at least twelve months ago, entitles ‘Sarg’. It was intended to be a part of my said major project; I changed my concept shortly after beginning the project however. Initially, it was to be war poetry (what the heck was I thinking!?) but there was a rather dramatic – and comical, in retrospect – change to feminist poetry, something more appropriate to me personally. So here we go: ‘Sarg’.

Goddammit I do hate that goddamn sound
more tea, son? Good for the nerves.
Stop that shaking, you’re almost
as bad as those bloody guns and things.
You’re a little quiet today.
Something wrong? Are you listening to me?
As I was saying, those German
bitches will be off their schnitzel
by tomorrow. Auf Wiedersehen, du Arschloch!
You’re looking a little pale, boy.
Something wrong? Are you listening to me?

[If you liked this, I highly recommend the film 'King and Country', particularly the Marxists among you.]