#293 - alighting for Ball's Head

 

12.x.20

293

alighting for Ball’s Head

 

for all over the place

 

I saw an aeroplane today

 

things are constantly being renamed

 

raucous are parrots

hear the train close

the koel’s spring telling  

 

and once in kindy

looking up

I was in trouble for that

though surely it was more than

should have paid attention

 

steps up

the rail white painted, splintery

the high road and the low

 

lap and wash

take the tram gone by

more miracles than flight!

 

I am walking back through a clock

this is my mirror

when we were blessed with time

and took up breezily

 

an elegance of boats in bay blue

which is a close up almost green

world sandstone edged

with block of sea salted

 

putt putt

not much mast or canvas

poor fellow’s harbour then

anyone’s

not so long since the midget subs

 

the picnic and might run off

if untethered

mum said

not bubblers

cause dogs drink too

(who knew such tongues

were antiseptic?

but were dogs then?)

 

it was a mongrel woofery

of all the street along

post twice a day

before joggers

or screens had souls to gaze into

and keep them palm up

 

there were cranks and ratbags

like Percy in the house behind

who’d turn off our water

because he could

I learnt the word ‘cantankerous’

 

an Mr Murphy caught the ferry

but he was just dog

 

once there was a car broke down

and each of us got a coke for pushing

though could not have helped much

 

cast of shadows

sun flashing in the lapping

 

close your eyes tight

see the stars

 

kept coming back for me, that sun

rust here and there

and things were sunk

or half so, floated

bamboo I remember

was lantana yet then?

 

must have I think

too small to remember

 

hydrangea and hibiscus

parks with bandstands

figs still coming to their mass and height

 

a lovely whiff of warmth

 

dogs walked people then as well

smaller and bigger today

 

swish swash

 

tall chimneys for chatter

and tuppence saved here

 

weatherboard hedging

smell paint

nobody spoke spears

or said there’d been a language

 

smallpox was barely known to the blankets

nor had the plague a mention

 

but take a captain cook

here was a drippery of rocks

 

and penny had a kangaroo

but wasn’t worth much now

 

the old were spry at times, not sprightly

as you see today

but cast against the die

 

disreputable fellows

drunks thrown from saloon doors

for almost Hollywood effect

 

here’s wattle and now bottlebrush

there wasn’t the jasmine there is today

 

little glass squares top of the window

coloured the sun inside

 

one day kerb and gutter

44 gallons of leaves slow to smoke

look up into a leafery

 

the bridge was the biggest thing ever

crown jewels in which pylon?

 

it was a stumble into the future

what would you call it now?

 

and this is the harbour whiff of my childhood

fainter and fainter and gone