I’m an occasional poet, which means that I occasionally write poetry and also that certain occasions seem to ask for a poem. ‘Second hand bookshop under lockdown’ is one of these. My first piece of published writing was a poem in a magazine called ‘Digger’ back in the 1970s. It was about the women’s movement. I haven’t kept it and I can’t recall it which is probably just as well. After long decades of writing prose, poems still come to me from time to time. I am seldom satisfied with the metre but have decided not to worry about that.
 

 
Second hand bookshop under lockdown.
 
The books form towers, in shadows 
by the doorway and around the walls.
We are here, they say, our words are here. 
Our spines face outwards to the dim room and closed door.
We are not arranged by date or author,
but known to the old man who has given us a home.
 
For many years I have been a customer,
coming in from the hot light of Hesse Street
in summer, or in winter, 
having crossed the road against the slanting rain.
Always it has been the same inside,
the same smell, old and welcoming.
 
The owner sits outside on a wooden bench,
eating an ice-cream, affecting nonchalance.
I take a few steps forward, then ask, ‘Are you open?’
‘I might be,’ he says.    
 
I stand on a chair and read titles with difficulty
in the corner furthest from the door. 
If I were so rash as to choose one
from near the bottom of a pile
and attempt to remove it,
all those above would fall down and crush me.
It would be a way to go, I think.
For a wordsmith like myself, not a bad way to go.
 
The owner has come in, still eating his ice-cream
as though it were some kind of prophylactic 
or excuse. ‘How are you coping?’ he asks.
I turn awkwardly, careful not to dislodge 
by even a puff of breath, the tower 
which seems to me a statement in itself. 
‘I’m alright,’ I say. ‘And you?’
‘I’m a bit lost,’ he says.
 
I nod and point. ‘I’ll have that one.’ 
It’s not the old friend I imagined finding and re-reading,
but in a bookshop under lockdown beggars can’t be choosers. 
We exchange a glance. The old man, keeping his distance, smiles.
The libraries are all shut, of course,
and the proper bookshop up the road.
I pay the princely sum of seven dollars
and leave with my purchase underneath my arm.
 
Can books transmit the virus?
I hope not. Can I catch it by touching any one of them?
I believe not, but will wash my hands in case.
I realise I wasn’t watching the old man
get down the book I wanted without causing an avalanche.
No doubt he has his methods.
I would like to turn back and ask, but do not.
Instead I climb into my car and drive home.  
 
  
   

The Ferry and the Kelp Forest

The ferry pulls away from the wharf,
its ballast mostly cars with picnic baskets, 
rugs from a bygone era.
Et In Arcadia Ego
I have often thought of that, mulled over what it meant –
the skulls beneath the bow wave –
a shallow crossing, save for the shipping channel.
 Who would be so bold as to imagine 
a foothold on the earth sufficed, let alone a grave?
 
How deep is a fathom?
Learnt in school, the measurements;
the song came later.
No coral bones at the bottom of the channel,
where the ebb tide sucks
and the branches of the kelp forest
stretch towards the open sea and whisper, ‘Come.’
 
Every hour on the hour, the ferry, boasting punctuality,
takes off. Passengers leave their cars
and climb to the upper deck.
‘Look,’ one says, ‘an albatross.’
‘A gannet,’ I wish to correct, and may do in a moment.
‘They have a nesting colony out here.’
Why wish good luck on us? Or luck of any kind.
We have slipped our ties, or may do any moment.
 
The wind makes music with the current beneath,
the arms that catch and hold a man against the tide. 
I retrieve coins from my pocket, but there’s no one to pay.
No ferryman or woman, their uniforms the same –
their shapes too, from a distance. An indifferent crew.
The captain on the bridge knows where we’re going.
But oh, how lightly breath holds here!
How lightly it might slip away.
 
There would be alarm, a cry,
for nowhere is hidden on the ferry.
There would be lifeboats, a search,
the schedule interrupted.
Waiting passengers would be talking on their mobile phones.
The kelp’s arms and the bones of dolphins –
would escape be quick enough?
Et in arcadia ego: in the midst of life is death;
in the midst of death, life continues.
What’s one more breath, after all? 

 
 
 
Leaning over the Rail
 
 
Over the railing,
a blur of dancing water
sucks up and drinks the light.
 
Commerce has it covered. 
Out beyond the headland
the container waits,
 
so long that, end to end, 
stretched the other way,
it would fill the shipping channel.
 
An orange pilot boat 
makes merry with the flood tide
that keeps larger craft at bay.
 
Too far away 
for the naked eye to grasp,
a ladder skims and bounces
 
down the mother vessel’s flank.
It’s calm. The pilot climbs.
Despite a fluoro jacket
 
the waves might take him if he fell. 
It’s happened more than once,
above stormy seas, in the dark of night.
 
The driver and the able seaman watch.
One smokes. The other looks up
at the container’s rim.
 
He thinks he sees a line of heads;
but who’d be peering now, over the railing,
to mark a commonplace event?
 
There are photographs in the museum.
In one, a man crawls spider-like, 
but with no encircling web,
 
his destination lost in blackness,
while below his men wait.
Melbourne’s hours away.
 
A story, passed down through the centuries,
tells of a boy who fell much further,
dousing flaming wings.
 
Do these men know it?
The driver guns his engine,
prepares to turn away,
 
with the tide now, shoreward,
while the ship absorbs the man 
who vanishes, hauling himself inside.    
 
 

  
Kerosene Jack
 
A treasure map was tattooed on Jack’s arm.
When he showed them, in the pub,
they grinned and shook their heads
 
and humoured him.
Belief was something else.
One stayed back to talk,
 
to study, through black hairs,
a railway line, a cave;
to ask, without appearing to be interested,
 
‘What’s in there, d’you reckon?’
Gold and statues from a pirate ship.
The whole town knew the story.
 
Where did the tattoo come from?
Jack couldn’t say exactly.
The man who’d asked went home, thoughtful, 
 
to his wife. Next day he borrowed spades, 
a drill. The way up was crumbling, sandy,
entrance marked by Moonah roots.
 
Above it, creepers coiled, exotic
and successful. An unlikely pair, these two,
The one who wore the map –
 
who spoke of visions in the night – 
the fisherman a sceptic
in the ordinary run of things. 
 
His wife sighed, pulling damper from the over.
Why had Jack, that troublemaker,
Fixed her man in his sights?    
 
The climb up was awkward.
The fisherman’s right knee ached.
He stopped to rest and looked down 
 
at his borrowed drill.
He rubbed his knee, and saw the town 
disappear behind a sea mist,
 
then hurried to catch up.
From the shore, a boy called out in alarm.
The search party made it to the landslide,
 
the cave that had collapsed in on itself
and buried the two men.
Trust Jack to do something mad.
 
But the fisherman, they said,
 ought to have known better
 than to follow a map into a hill.
 
The boy who’d sounded the alarm
climbed up and up, deaf to his mother’s calls.
He hauled on vines till he was at the top,
 
above the cave, looking out to sea,
the way pirates came 
with treasure from Peru. 
 

 The life of art
 
 
For it is contained there,
perfect in its imperfection,
in each leaf that has a heart,
so ordinary and numerous 
that no painter would think to paint them.
 
Within the ordinary –
within ordinary objects –
for the most part not considered worth a second look –
there remains a work of art,
surprising in its stillness and its movement.
 
A stone, after rain,
Is both rounded and made sharp.
It stands out from a multitude of others on the road.
Of all the leaves along the path each one is singled out.
 
No one need paint these, or record them,
but if one has a mind to,
a mind harassed and sullied 
by the troubles of the day,
a heart still beating for all that – 
if one has such a mind and heart,
then one might both begin and end 
with ordinary leaves and stones,
might make a space for them
in a work of art.  
 
  
Divje Babe – womens’ cave
 
Music pierces the ancient darkness,
the sound of a bone flute
and of women singing.
 
In amongst the women there are girls,
high voices breaking up.
A baby cries. 
 
It is 60,000 years ago,
enough that the cave gives shelter, warmth, 
a safe place to sleep.
 
What of music then?
A small girl listens intently,
watching in the firelight.
 
When the woman puts the flute down on a ledge,
she picks it up, holds it to her mouth.
She is too small to make much of a sound,
 
but looks around, fearing harsh words
or a slap. The musician is watching her
in the light of the fire.
 
For a moment there is silence.
No one speaks. The baby has stopped crying.
The musician smiles and moves over to the ledge.
 
She shows the young girl
where to put her fingers,
how to blow.
 
The girl nods, intent and serious.
She doesn’t have the strength yet,
but it will come.