Words and Lines

Landmark

by Tris Kerslake

Just there, beyond my ordinary sight, behind those hills, across grave fields of rumpled soil, lies the centre of the world.

Without a sign, distaining temporary things like words, there is a shouting out of place that thumps the pulse and ferries countless memories into a harbour I had not even known was bare.

At once invisible and of the stuff that mountains cross, it does not need my mark to be but all the same, indulges recognition through postcards in the tourist shop.

It does not meet the infidel’s request of gold or visionary scenes, but offers quiet temples cast in stone and air where converts come in hope, like me, of faith renewed.

And here I am. With almost music and with grass beneath my feet, I know this place. Mother, father, heart, I am a child of here.

On The Road To Swan Hill

by Tris Kerslake

A place of meditation and of thoughtless speed. No wonder that the kangaroos keep silent in the scrubby eaves, or hold a stillness that defies the beating pulse.

So dry and yellow, I track the wounded road and rubber remnants into deepest country where there are no birds, not one, between the grinding borders framing slants of shallow ground and empty trees. A vagrant cow perhaps, a unique sheep, the only ones that ride with me along the Swan Hill road.

Little living on the bark-scree slopes, along the edge of circumstance and drought where drivers stop to piss in accidental shade and where the clanking engine means an S.O.S.

Isolation falls on me, pushes knowledge far behind to telephones and TV screens where only natives of this distant trail could need its dizzy solitude, and crave its parallels of sky and tree-top lines. The vague dominion of some passing jet thunders, calling me to mind my bit of Swan Hill road.

In leaving civic confines by this pass I had not thought to leave my urban urgency as well. At dusk the only lights are those that move with me, that blink at doubtful ghosts.

And so I rush the hours dividing me from busy streets and placid country town. I wait for screams of sirens in the dark, commuting faces watchful at the paving’s edge, the yell of feral music from some reeking truck. There is no life beside this passive artery, no heartbeat and no flowing down the Swan Hill road.

Nor are there cars to mark my passing nor homes nor fields to make me civilised and slightly tame. I drive by skid-marks, endless tails wagging through the night, stories having no outside world to tell.

And measured city needs are useless now, why count the rules where they cannot count? The engine comforts me and rolls me down the silent miles that drink us dry. I long for other sounds, for sights of pilgrims, spoor of greater travellers than I reminding me with tactful signs that swans were here.

Sleeping Dogs

by Tris Kerslake

Regrets and memories, tumbled recollections in a drawer of thought. Let be, unroused.

Packed in careful dust and sheltered from the grieving heartbeat, softly sleeping slowly aging.

Woken by a reckless touch they scatter, shooting feather-light to unknown landings hard and rocky.

Like wounds unchecked, they bleed afresh measuring a modern worth of blame. Unchained, they run.

No words can haul them back, no cry or crying blunts their yellowed claws, in packs they hunt old prey.

I will not share the most ungentle past and stir the dogs. The hand they bite is mine. Let be. Unroused.

Autumn in a Foreign Country

by Tris Kerslake

I think of distance when the red sedum blossoms, tall gifts of summer.

Welcoming cool winds, fading flowers to golden, I hear your far voice.

The blossoms are gone now, in time and memory. You still call me home.

No Pips

by Tris Kerslake

Rummage through the little lives and try on several that we think might fit. An import clerk, a stripper in a lunchtime pub, a Vet. We ring the changes as we ring the days, looking for a better role.

Called on-stage we dance our steps sporting costumes that become us generally. A feather boa or a shirt-and-tie, and hats stiff with labelled fruit. I wish the grapes were mine, juicy-sweet, and with no pips.

Write Me Something

(on university examinations)

by Tris Kerslake

It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece, just several thousand works of art that sing of Gilgamesh and Moby Dick.

Consider this a little trial for bigger things. Include for me a snappy paragraph or two that deconstructs the words of God, perhaps you could explore why myths are.

Or you could do the Greeks. There were a few of them, I know, but Homer said it all. Heroic drama is the thing, a touch of rhetoric will fill the page.

Just write me something that I can use to exercise my cutting pen, and try to leave out Dylan Thomas if you can. He wasn’t One Of Us.

A stream of consciousness might do as you unfold your tatty books and what shall I say about the feeble scribbles oh no the coffee’s cold now who’s at the door. But take no risks.

There’s always good old Milton in a pinch, and Eliot or even Whitman if you feel poetic, but never ever write me something of your own.

Not Found

by Tris Kerslake

Change is not the only thing we have, there must be flowers yet. Graffiti, little phones and ribbons for the dying, merest decoupage, selected icons, paper-thin, that stain the backlit fractures from a sweeter world, between the broken words of murder and of starving men, the child-crushed dreams of beaten girls, there must be, sometimes, brilliant lines of wonderment, between the pages. Give me flowers still.

Only find me places where today is thin, the gloss is dull, behind the sad, between the racks of yellow press and Kodak fear. Lay me down in rarest blooms and give me call to see just once, just once, that I am right, that we are greater than our images of dross and useless wealth and hold in state some wondrous simple life where bees are sacred and innocence is still a flawless thing.

Shades Of A Tall Tree

by Tris Kerslake

Beckon me, just off the road through spiralled squeals of golden birds and unlaced green. The hinted mystery of twilight that shapes a velvet path among the resting leaves, hides whispered histories and time.

Slim sentinels of lavish white on guard before a majesty, an ancient queen, taller than her father of the plains and lonely as a tyrant. Her face is shrouded by a veil of summer emeralds.

Cowed beneath dictated sun, the parasols of dainty fern and twilight fuse in hushed pavanes where flash-blue wrens play hide-and-seek and chitter, elegant as crystal, courtesans of finest altitude.

Essence creeps around the feet of many years, a sweeter musk than all the blooms, no damask rose could ever make such fragrant symphony. Exquisite balm of sovereigns that softly shivers all the senses.

And shadows hold their breathing secret, cloaks of gently rustled darkness hover all around and in between like spies. Rising from the shades with flagrant innuendo the royal flanks soaring proudly serene.

A subtle chill and the mood is gone the moment dead. The saplings stand apart and still, hanging ferns have lost all reticence and the birds are hushed. The vacant pathways trace an echo, the queen is only sleeping.

Homesick

by Tris Kerslake

They say that time and distance mend, that counted hours and days can knit the raggy edges neat, can coat the bone, and cloud the scalpel scars. They even say that ignorance is bliss, when understanding, cast upon the wind might blur the sharpness of the act into shapes of comfort.

These words are false.

No passing age can reconcile the ache and there are insufficient miles around this weary globe to ease the constant want of old backyards, I am cut too deep.

Superficial wounds of absence vanish like the braded skin which clings to scuffings of the knee. One hundred broken bones cannot compare to a second’s exile.

And where my present knowledge ends, with insight razed by severance and foreign things, there is no bliss nor lessening of pain. The choice I made reduces me.

Buying Two-Tooth

by Tris Kerslake

With mindful steps I dance the shopper’s minuet through stores that flirt with tourists and with time, where plastic cash is still a novelty and locals use a monthly slate.

In corner stalls I find that sacks are back again with rice and flour and pulses, tea and corn, and iron skillets hanging from the roof among the hats and drying blooms.

In others see the dangled racks of rawhide tack that sway and clink in leather-scented air, above the glinting coils of stainless wire tumbled neatly under counters.

And then I find myself a shaded marble shop that breathes a coolness over quiet beef, where lambs have many legs and steak is king and they are selling Two-tooth.

Not wishing to appear naive or tourist-dim I concentrate on names I understand, comparing meatballs with the porterhouse, topside, pork-chops by the Two-tooth.

She smiles at me and asks me what I’d like to put upon my table by the veg, I wave my magic finger, miny-mo and let it slip towards the stranger stuff.