Australia Calling Home

Aus­tralia Call­ing Home

I remem­ber burn­ing beaches and the rush of salty waves,
I remem­ber long cool drinks in the shade of old tin shacks.
There were dusty tracks through bush­land to hid­den moun­tain pools,
And brain­less boys who lived to tell of leaps from walls of rock.

We grew to slicked down teens on the hunt for bimbo blondes,
And our rusty hurtling cars were the ter­ror of the streets.
We were care­less of the hard bright sun, of booze and friendly smiles,
Then fell for love, the fix was in, Aus­tralia was our home.

Thor, China
    spring 2008
(Port Mac­quarie beach, NSW; image cour­tesy of www.sydney-australia.biz)
.. for other exam­ples of Thor’s poetry, see Time Pass­ing
at http://thormay.net/literature/poems.html

Australian Blue

Aus­tralian Blue

Cen­tre coun­try scene:

A thou­sand miles of desert,
Ten thou­sand miles of shim­mer­ing heat.
In and out the Dead Heart,
Only one great vast­ness;
Up and down the Dia­man­tina,
Sand tor­rents stopped and stilled.

Hills dance like rain­bow ser­pents,
Mirages race like shad­owed giants,
Try­ing to vie with the sun in their reach.
A wild eye is needed
To view this wilder­ness decked with blue
In all its unfor­giv­ing beauty.

Thor (cheer­fully rip­ping off Mao Zedong, “Snow”)
April 2008
———
Con­tinue read­ing

Seventeen in 1962

This longish poem, Sev­en­teen in 1962, is a pretty accu­rate descrip­tion of my first job in Nun­dah, Bris­bane, in 1962. I was a stranger in the city. My fam­ily came from around Syd­ney, and had just retreated, nearly bank­rupt, from a failed migra­tion to north Queens­land where south­ern­ers were unwel­come. The bit­ter­ness of tone per­sisted for much of my first ten years in unskilled jobs after leav­ing high school,  partly per­haps from dis­ap­point­ment after hav­ing topped the school aca­d­e­m­i­cally, then col­lid­ing with the incom­pre­hen­sion of work­ing class par­ents and the indif­fer­ence of gen­eral Aus­tralian cul­ture. The peo­ple I knew or met seemed to resent intel­lec­tual curios­ity. They wanted to be respected veg­eta­bles in a very small gar­den plot. As a com­plete out­sider with­out money or any social skills at all, it was a friend­less time.

                    Sev­en­teen in 1962

The wait was over, the grow­ing done,
Just the fill­ing out to come;
Time of promise, time to fear,
Gan­gling sev­en­teen.

First job, be-clerked, min­nowed and shoaled
With the eight o’clock tide, be-tied.
And the man­ager, Minikin, said marry your­self
To the com­pany, boy-man to be made;
Tuck in your shirt and swear
Here will be done as your elders have done,
Let all debtors be blessed, amen
And wipe the smirk off your face.

Con­tinue read­ing