MRS GRIFFITH'S COCKY

Mrs Griffiths has a cocky

who lives in a dome shaped cage

and when he gets his dander up

boy, listen to him rage.

He jabbers and he natters in

a scratchy high pitched tone,

he screams abuse and threatens

till Mrs G yells, ”Leave the bird alone!”

With her fag dangling from her lip

she lets him do a flit

up and down the neighbours ‘fences

whereupon he then commences to

pull all the marigolds and dahlias

to bits.

We love Mrs Griffith’s cocky

when he hangs upside down

and swings in lazy motions

like some white and feathered clown.

From the clothesline wire he dangles,

first on one leg ,then on two,

and his beady eyes are darting round

for wicked things to do.

With a graceful practised swoop,

he lands upon the chicken coop

and rocks there, jeering at their

slow and clucking ways—

till Mr G comes home and as he

lurches up the drive

with his beer and cigs and pies,

Cocky does a screaming dive:

‘Jack’s alive, Jack’s alive!’

Then he goes into a death roll

and lands upon his back,

draws his legs up

and gives a little shudder.

And Jack stares at him, myopic,

and wonders if he’s dead,

till Mrs G emerges [with rollers on her head],

“Come on in youse silly nutters,

Time some cockies was in bed.”

THE COUNTRYMAN

He wasn’t that old,

I wonder what took him out?

Last time I saw him

with his dogs in the ute

and a couple of dried

kangaroo legs in the tray,

“Keeps ‘em happy,” he said,

we’d been in the paddock

where the bulls are kept.

“Saw you moving fast.”

His drawl and lopsided smile.

“The bracken’s a bugger to get through.”

He kept his dogs working

or tied to a chain

and locked gates behind him

like he locked his thoughts

to country ways, taciturn, oblique.

Guess the dogs’ll miss him too.

TALBINGO MOUNTAIN

Talbingo Mountain, steep, so steep

that sand is spread upon its road

to stop the cars from slipping.

Across the gorge, green shadowed in

late afternoon, the granite outcrops soar

and candlebark and stringybark lean thinly

keeping balance in the ancient shallow soils.

They say the man who blazed the track

came down it with a wagon.

He tied cut sleepers to its back,

logs like landlocked anchors,

while his wife jog jolted at his side,

their baby in a basket, trusting that

the horses wouldn’t bolt or slide.

Fear quickens in my stomach

when I take to the mountain road

winding up Yarrangobilly

where we used to go

tobogganing as children.

Did the pioneers feel it

slopping at their insides

like loose water in a quart pot

or was their life hard enough

without the luxury of fear?

SACRE COUER

We climbed the steps to

Sacre Coeur past Carousel

and African boys pushing

braided bangles. So steep

the stairs I am undone,

my breath hangs puffs in

white summer air no wonder

at the top are ambulances.

Those in the know ride up

in buses from the Metro.

It’s not till I am inside

drowning in the perfumed

sound of white cowled nuns

singing and being swatted

by ushers hushing tourists

come to gaze and say I’ve been

there to Sacre Coeur

when showing a postcard

back home; that the

gift of gilt and mosaics

and height and light pierces

my heart and for a sweet orison

or two: I believe.

RIDING THE SKY

Last night the moon made an appearance

in a pink and blue curtain of cloud.

It hung over Mt Wheeler awaiting applause for

its coming.

All day it had rained, the sky swallowed in mists,

trees looming blackly in our headlights

as we climbed to Thredbo.

Summer was lost where sky met the Earth.

But the moon, tilly lamp

of evening, partnered

in sun’s set over valleys,

where the rain had been vanquished

to puddles on the road.

And from our verandah

we encored.

THE VALIANT

Back in the time of crows

Mrs Hargreaves swept her yard

until the ground was shiny black

packed hard and didn’t dare to crack

beneath her millet boom.

Outside her back door

fire logs haphazard stacked

and from within their timber veins

velvet witchetys on crumbling lines

soft sacrifices to her hearth, in hiding.

Scarlet poppies vied with suede

coxcombs along a straight

cemented path, as sickly privets

fled the tautened diamond

wire panes that twanged

to trails of finger fenceline play.

Her children blundered sockless in their canvas shoes

a smell of rotting apricots and ripened veg.

But in their street, cocky knights of earth and beast,

no one dared gainsay their craft.

We, tidily enthralled to bursting,

fashioned shanghais in their train

to ping ball bearings at the crows.

GIRL AT THE BUS STOP

Last night blurs

Sank too many

Vodka cruisers.

Raging.

We rocked back

God knows where,

Did it in the lounge room

Fell up the stairs.

His mate came in

Pale chest, no hairs,

Stared at me a moment

Din’t know he was there.

Feel sick, feel crap

Vomit on my tongue.

Wish I didn’t come here

Want my mum

THE HUNTED

Macquarie Harbour inlet.

Trees not even a body’s width

and so crammed up the slope

of boggy moss and wiry ferns, with

tussocks not grass but swords that slash.

A bastard country.

And now the dogs are after us.

Unseen birds jeer

from scrofulous trunks.

That one’s a wren!

Oh Christ a home song.

The breakers roar out west

but up this creek

the shadows lie still on water

green and black, peat beneath,

[even the swans are backwards black].

and always the ravens cry defeat.

Onwards dragging, sideways tearing.

Take your choice of death.

ON THE DEATH OF YOUNG JOE

On the death of Young Joe

Last night the rubber fishtailed

despairing graffiti.

The young men sat around the

tankstand, drinking.

Their Blundstones crushed

tinnies underfoot.

Fingers denuded the oval

where squatting on haunches they muttered and

mourned and howled like dingoes,

shattering the smeary silence

of grief with bewildered memories.

Tonight the only sound is

wind in the high gums

and the muted growl of

a V8 way down in the valley.

Even the sky has drawn its veil

in sorrow, the moon is in hiding

and it’s left to the street lights,

bouncing off garbage bins,

to usher Death out of the neighbourhood.

LETTING GO

You lie under the stars,

that glorious swathe

of icy brightness

in the black country night.

Down on the river flat

a beast gives tongue.

If you listen long enough

the mopoke calls

while the water

falls and rushes,

runs and rushes.

And from your house

the light spills forth.

The voices murmur

riverlike, a burst of song

and often laughter.

Do you hear?

Do you feel the clay

beneath our feet?

The crunch of frost

beneath our feet?

The roots of roses

overhead?

You were of the land.

We gave you back

with love for your being.

HINDSIGHT

A Sydney creek.

dancing in old light.

Shallow sand sifts under toes

spiders hide in bleached bark

as we pass ti-tree tight blossom.

My grandfather, sure footed,

splashes into the shadows

seeking old haunts

of Hawkesbury sandstone.

We are hunting oysters.

Having jagged them off the rocks

he will stuff them

into long jars wrapped

in burlap, wedged in a basket;

will carry them triumphant

to his friend, a much younger woman,

while his wife waits

at home

with lemons and bread.

FEAST

I have eaten the city, taken in huge gobfuls

Of wintery lightfall on gray metal rooflines

Sucked out the marrow of tenement houses

And spat on the doorsteps carved deep by past feet.

I have plunged my lips along park benches and lake reeds,

Guzzled black swans under canopies of date palms

Savoured the creamery of frangipani lit gardens

And dined on old bus fumes pumping black in my veins.

My teeth have crunched over pink sandstone shorelines

Slaked down slime oysters drowned in sea brine.

Roving the wharflands my tongue goes riffling through gutters

Slurping on pubspill, licking tar from the street.

When summer arises I hunger for ferries

And gorge on the sails of triangular light.

City of ancestry, city of youth,

I devour my history, carve the corporeal roast.

COUNTRY PUBS

Country pubs are works of art,

rivals to the stony banks and isolated

corrugated halls of prosperous country towns.

Country pubs are frills of lace

cascading down verandahs

to cartwheels at the gates

and convoluted timber posts

holding aloft iron mantillas

which screen the girls scurrying to work

up on the boards.

Country pubs have tiled murals

of flannelled cricketers and rugby men in boxer shorts

or muscled marvels with lantern jaws

sporting gloves beneath the gold leafed

Tooths and Tooheys and Wheatsheaf ales.

And somewhere round their skirts

will be a tunnel leading down

to cooler depths in which the kegs repose.

While kelpies sleep on coir mats around

the Saloon’s door and kids balance on

the silvered rails where once, tired horses waited.

And inside is dim, eye-adjusting light

rarely shafted by the sun

so that the bar retains its shine.

Mahogany and brass and curlique etchings in gilded

glass and row on row of

sea green bottles and thickened thimbles grooved.

While on the counter erect and ready for the tugging

the beer taps glow from constant use.

The sill’s worn dipped by countless feet,

likewise the polished halls off which

a score of wooden doors open into

bind-light rooms, with iron grates and patterned tiles,

ceiling roses too.

An iron bed spread body-bent towards the rug

upon the floor, dulled by the grime of

timber fellers, poorer cockies, richer squatters,

land agents, salesmen of liverfluke pills and

worm dips for sheep, honest travellers and rodeo riders,

circus sharps and country yokels

all just passing through.

Come down to dine. There’s damask

cloths starched and ironed and weighed down

by the silver.

China, thickly white is monogrammed,

a relic of the roaring days.

The tea is real, from man sized pots,

and you can snack on loaves of toast,

slabs of butter, half a pig and a dozen eggs

laid side by side with mountain steaks

and all the taties your mouth can hold.

Through the fly screened doors will push

the maids, hidden in aprons, rushing trays and

yellow cloths to dust the glasses near the water jugs.

Let’s raise our schooners, pots and pints

and have a jug or two.

Let’s bend the elbow, have a nip or just a tot

and follow with a chaser.

We’ll drink the health of country pubs,

pay them homage, give them their dues.

May they stand forever, framed and mounted

on the corners of our land.

CHILDHOOD

Slippery as dreams,

slabs of sunlight

on dusty roads,

skimming willows’

black depths and sitting

on post and rail fences worn

shiny smooth by generations

of squatters’ kids.

Blackberries in perfect

globules of burgundy juice

ooze down sunbrowned chins

to run in purple rivers along

our fingers as we scrabble

to keep footing on the

bramble hugging banks.

While the creeks of time

run coldly from the mountains

of the South

on a patchwork bed

of rounded sandsucked stones.

And the ghost of Harry Pether

sends us pelting past in terror

from the woolshed in the paddock

by the Old Talbingo’s pub.

Cooma Song

I’m pacing at the station

in this bleak high country town,

where straw bones of the mountains

are beaten battered down.

It’s cold here waiting on the platform.

Everyone’s gone home except me.

Crow calls lonely in the thin winter sun,

crying that my lover won’t come.

Sing crow in the wind.

Shine light down the line.

Take me out of the

shadows of my heart.

It’s cold here waiting on the platform.

Everyone’s gone home except me.

Crow calls lonely in the thin winter sun,

crying that my lover won’t come.

Leatherbarrel Creek

Cleft in the range, V shaped in shadow

sunlight rarely shafting.

Creek tumbles over icy brilliants, churn

in snow melt surge.

Come summer trickles black green, floating

dry leaf, seed laden twigs.

Above the corded bridge logs twist

the track skywards to Dead Horse Gap.

Once spring snow floated flaking

wet petals, dissolved on your face in soft fog.

Caught in old memory

you wept and laughed aloud

by Leatherbarrel.

Towong Janury

Car lights in the night leading to White's block house farm.

Above the sky, black slate slit along the mountain

crest lets in the moonlight, creamy light after rain.

Three shades of black make up the mountain, hill and river:

no water now, just stones where once an island rose.

Cockatoos have long since ceased their raucous cries: the

magpies caroled one bell.

Down among the campers' tents lit by soft diffusing gas

kookaburras laughed, then fell silent. But a lone

plover, wings slicing up the night

creaks its call across the flats and willows.

The car turns and makes for town,

its lamp beams silhouette the elms before the

river banks and mint beds. Suddenly

the ridge planks flap angrily.

Two rattles; beyond the bend the car disappears.

"I think I'm ok now, " says my mother, octogenarian

who has crossed four states in twentyfour hours

and was mightily confused in the hubbub of

Kingsford Smith runways, stairs, travelators,

steel trolleys, fast food joints, intercoms.

"I'm home now."

test run

canada 2010 rocky mountain house