Poem 285

The second to last poem on the second to last page of my first folio (collecting all my poems since childhood) marking both an end and a beginning … September 1982 when I had given my notice at the Reserve Bank and committed myself to pursuing writing I was operating on hope alone that when I sat down on the first morning of my new life that there’d be something there to write … in fact I hadn’t written anything for quite a while – who was I now as a writer? … I needed some proof of concept to help keep my nerve up so one Saturday while I was still working as a programmer I took a notebook in my pocket and went walking for the day looking to meet myself as a writer again … I stopped over and over scribbling poem after poem into the notebook imagination buzzing, feeling that bit of my brain come alive again and even better discovering it a bit more grown up in its voice … 

… my walk took me from Hataitai over the top of Mt Victoria through the town belt … this was written in the pines above the bus tunnel at the top of Pirie St … pine plantations are comforting and sinister in equal measure and I like the way I’ve captured that here along with my own sense of liminality as I prepare to take the proper plunge at last into real writing, poised at the fence line indeed … in a lot of ways everything started that Saturday …

Fence Line

Here at the end of the fence line
where the rusted wires dive into the ground
the wires that join the trees
sewed through their bark by age
here where flesh has blossomed 
under spiky branches
like mushrooms
wet handkerchiefs
                                 soggy pages of magazines
I stand and feel behind my back
the tree move deep in the ground
and above where the wind 
grapples it back and forth

bottles buried 
in the pine humus
the white of bodies
warmth of semen 
whipped in the vast 
draughty room
the exposed heights
                                     rusted barbs 
                                     in the flesh

I stand like a high diver
waiting on the world