Tuesday poem: Faith took a holiday
November 16, 2016
Faith took a holiday
He hitched down the Hume, or up;
he didn’t tell me. Faith has no fear
of murder, or everyday sleazes
and their boring imprecations.
It’s the ones left behind
who tend to fret. What if,
we say, and perhaps…
as if perhaps isn’t Faith
flipped like a decisive coin,
standing on his head.
As if as if isn’t
closer to for sure
than some might like it to be.
Faith rang me from Melbourne,
(so it was down the Hume)
and said he wanted to look around
a bit longer; catch the trams.
He too remembers
the excellent days of conductors,
with their magical brown bags.
Even Faith feels regret
at the passing of old days;
the spinning of so much
towards the expansive sun
of interconnected drivel.
There is a grace
in not knowing too much,
he said, though Faith would say that,
I suppose. That’s his job.
A kind of conductor
unseen in any tram,
on any route, whatsoever.
Faith will return soon;
I can hear the jingling
just at the edge of thought
and the tune is one
I almost remember.
The brown bag of my
restless, overloaded brain
awaits his presence,
and will sling itself, eager,
over his patient arm.
P.S. Cottier
Like a lot of the world, I’m suffering the post-US election blues, and almost didn’t post this week. The clever amongst you will have noticed that it is Wednesday, not Tuesday, and the weekly schedule has been disrupted. But poetry is fairly unstoppable!
For my overseas readers, the Hume is the major highway linking Melbourne and Sydney. Canberra is just a wee drive from it.
I have no idea why Faith is male in the poem. Perhaps it was some association with Christ? And my phone has just died, which has me longing for the ‘interconnected drivel’ which I decry in the poem, even if I’m avoiding news sites at the moment.
So who is in it?
May 22, 2014
I thought people might be interested to know who is in The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry. So here is the full list:
David Adès, Zoë Anderson, Jude Aquilina, Emilie Zoey Baker, Catherine Bateson, Eric Beach, Judith Beveridge, Jenny Blackford, Peter Boyle, John Le Gay Brereton, Sara Bruxner, joanne burns, Michael Byrne, Caroline Caddy, me, Mike Crowl, Victor J. Daley, Luke Davies, C.J. Dennis, Jake Dennis, Benjamin Dodds, Joe Dolce, Michael Dransfield, Diane Fahey, Mary Hannay Foott, Carolyn Gerrish, Kevin Gillam, Alan Gould, John Grey, Lesbian Harford, Dimitra Harvey, Ron Heard, Eliza-Jane Henry-Jones, Matt Hetherington, Paul Hetherington, Dorothy Hewett, Marilyn Humbert, Lisa Jacobson, John Jenkins, Jill Jones, Raphael Kabo, Melinda Kallasmae, S.K. Kelen, Earl Livings, Chris Lynch, Emily Manger, Catherine Martin, M.F. McAuliffe, Victoria McGrath, Jo Mills, Peter Minter, Lizz Murphy, Les Murray, Jan Napier, John Shaw Neilson, Barry O’Donahue, Jan Owen, Moya Pacey, Andrew Barton Paterson, Simon Petrie, Dorothy Porter, Craig Powell, David P. Reiter, Philip Salom, Janeen Samuel, Miro Sandev, Tim Sinclair, Alex Skovron, Melinda Smith, J. Brunton Stephens, Alan Stewart, John Tranter, John Upton, Rod Usher, Susan Waddell, Rob Walker, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Samuel Wagan Watson, Mercedes Webb-Pullman, Les Wicks, Sean Williams, SB Wright.
Rapt, I am, to unwrap such a group. Lovely pagefellows to lie between such covers:
I am really looking forward to the launches now. I’ll post the invitation posters again soon, just in case the list has inspired you to come along and hear some of that group read at either of the launches. (I copied the list by hand and eye, just to refamiliarise myself, so please excuse any typos, which are not in the book!)
PS Cottier 