Poem from a hammock
January 2, 2012
It’s perfect weather, about 30 degrees. I’ve been swimming twice today, and saw dolphins, black cockatoos and Brazilian tourists; all very pretty. Tomorrow a new Test match starts. There’s always a new Test match at this time of year, and then there’s tennis, or should I say Tennis, in Melbourne. This poem relates to the Boxing Day Test at the MCG, and was written as India came out to bat. (I’m a quick poet, so I finished this before their innings was over…)
I know there’s still a world somewhere outside this huge brown hammock of a country, but in the middle of Summer, at the beach, that seems like an unlikely dream. Here’s a lazy sonnet from a currently rather lazy country:
Every Summer
The flat green bird, flecked with white,
squawks all Summer in the corner.
Clarke, Ponting, Hilfenhaus, Warner
versus Dhoni and Dravid (the one to dislike).
There’s a shadow plays just behind this match
for something odd occurred at Bellerive,
concerning Kiwis, still hard to believe.
So in case something else weird should hatch,
there’s a certain anxiety beneath our banter.
India’s chasing two hundred and ninety-two.
(Difficult, but not impossible to do.)
But I think we’ll win now, in a canter.
And when it’s over, and the song is sung,
silence pounds out its ghostly runs.
P.S. Cottier
Seams? I know not seams.
Best wishes to anyone active enough to be surfing the net. I’ll be back in full hardworking poetry-factory mode soon enough. When I extract myself from the comfortable myth of perfection. Happy new year to everyone.
(And after a lot of thought – for they still pop up in Australia in Summer – I can’t mention New Zealand in a light-hearted poem without at least acknowledging the new earthquakes that happened over the holiday period. I read the ugly words like ‘liquefaction’ and have no idea what that would really mean, except that it must be terrifying to be in Christchurch when these tremors/quakes occur.)
Update: I realise now, having visited some news sites, that as I was drafting this entry, another major tremor hit Christchurch. I hope that the damage was minimal.
PS Cottier 
I’m just watching the first few overs of the second Test, so that seems a particularly good time to comment and say that I enjoyed your poem – especially the reference to New Zealand’s victory in Hobart! But why the dislike of that lovely Mr Dravid?
With every new tremor that hits Christchurch, I grow more thankful that my Dad no longer lives there – but my apprehension for those who do still live there grows.
I’ll assume the question about Dravid is sarcastic. Or that New Zealanders are a total mystery wrapped in a similar accent, with eyes that detect manly virtue where I can’t.
Useless words such as ‘unfair’ come to mind when I think of Christchurch, but when was a natural phenomenon ever concerned with that?
Best wishes for 2012.
I guess we’ll just just have to agree to disagree about Rahul Dravid – he’s always been one of my favourite cricketers, and his recent Bradman Oration was rather good too:
http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/545355.html
Still, if Aussies and New Zealanders couldn’t disagree over cricket, then where would we be?
Thanks for the speech link, Tim.
The different preferences in cricketers are probably more personal than national, come to think of it, although it is true that people can be deported from Australia for agreeing on any question of cricket with New Zealanders. They are transported to England.