Eyes on potatoes
on the eighth day of April or
is it the ninth after equinox
at any rate everything’s moving
smoothly through these dailinesses,
I've got my eyes on the potatoes
and my finger, unfaltering, on
the saucepan outside, the bucket men,
in traffic-blackened floral shirts,
fraying jeans, rubber thongs ,
persistently, at every set of lights,
set their coins towards a dreamy goal -
some piercings and a Pulsar
_
downloading Laurie's poems,
pages flutter off the printer tray
and get mixed-up with bits of Bolton’s.
I walk out to look up at the vast sky
lit by a huge full moon the night
is tranquil everyone's indoors watching
crap tv the muffled sounds of soaps
lulled by wintry fossil fuels and
natural gas, sleepy dwellers lounge tonight,
cooking aromas on this side of the building
aren't nearly as good as Stella's
smoky herring and pirozhki on the opposite
_
times are improving and, for the moment,
my blood pressure too, from nothing to none,
my temperate cells unexcited I recount
today’s small events at the lunchtime reading
I was not too disappointed when
Jennifer Maiden introduced her poem
about the Monaro and it was not,
as I'd hoped, about the car only about
the region near Canberra - a lyrical
and ‘political’ pastoral - remarkably placid,
my mood, a little deflated, maintained
equilibrium - I returned to work -
_
coming, as the poet does, from Penrith -
poor rail service, and far away - reliant
on a sleek and dreary motorway,
it’s entirely reasonable to imagine the poem
to be about a car in fact, a beautiful,
streamlined idea I mutter, mentally,
as I resume a ruinous posture on the lime-green
ergonomic chair to collate & staple while
both librarians suffer fou rire as does
the wheat-grass enthusiast here to research,
so requiring their help not mine, I
who, when in the workplace, laugh privately
_
in the city of my rebellions a swayback iron bridge
spans the powerful river Teneriffe sugar mill -
redundant, like most first-world port city mills,
another conversion to flats. cool river air streams through louvres,
& up-to-date young poets choose Europe’s leather coats -
in 30_ heat, clothes maketh the poet - I select a flimsy blouse,
subfusc, to wear against the glare. so, to wonder - why did
Gwen Harwood wear those wide, white, lace-trimmed
reformation–style collars ? was she a quaker,
a shaker, a musketeer were the collars a joke ?
like her most famous acrostic from which, in this,
Gwen’s city, one poetry editor differs, definitely …
_
the bottle-os (now called ‘recyclers’) tinkle & thud their way
up the road through smog-filtered sunlight, that seems,
this morning, tangible as I recollect last night’s radio program
about, coincidentally, Gwen Harwood’s re-collected poetry -
that inexpectantly, & against a babbling earnestness, I switched off,
preferring to dawdle in contemplation of appreciable names -
like Gwen, short for Gwendolyn, or Vera, a beautiful
Brisbane kind of name, or Amélie as in Amélie Mauresmo,
but should I continue my poem will be construed
as “funny” like my inclusion of some notes on a reading
by Jennifer Maiden - a complex, critical poet I admire -
in this short sequence of fattening 12-line sonnets
_
maybe it is it is yet, moving quietly backwards
along Heliopolis Street’s green footpaths seasonally littered
with luscious, gluey mangoes past wide dark weatherboards
made mysterious by their distance all set right back
from the dusty gravel road bottling tadpoles in a downpour
from newly gouged & flowing roadside channels - walking that way
to Mitchelton primary school my second, Gwen’s first school.
and later, cycling those miles past market gardens grubby ibis
grazing on scraps on the sports oval to humble Mitchelton high school
featuring now, I’ve heard, in an anthology of schooldays - there recalled
by Janette Hospital, old humble-school-tie novelist. did Gwen or
Janette, heat-struck by summer, vomit & pass out (like I did) in 40˚ shade?
_
rushing towards fresh notebooks ardent contributors
all fired up wanting to fill up recalling, recollecting,
reinterpreting, retelling finally ready for retailing -
thematic anthologies - like love like schooldays like travel
like war like dope like childhood – leave them to Granta.
how fascinating is a writer’s life ? a poet’s life ? an Australian
poet’s life ? brilliant memoirs of teeth clicking on biro shafts,
travelling the rocky road to digital fridge poems horrendous
line-losing magazine experiences profoundly lonesome
proofreading under starlight, under halogen too long alone,
often concluding mid-process in demented philosophising :
what is swept out the door coming back through the window
