12
17
Avenue Road
after Ian
Humphrey's 'First Poem'
https://conversationinpoetry.blogspot.com.au/2018/01/ian-humphreys-2-first-poem-in-response.html
So they
had the boy baptized, and as they baptized him he plunged into the
sea. And immediately when he was in the sea, he took its nature, and
swam as well as the best fish that was therein.
--
from Math,
son of Mathonwy, in
The
Mabinogion
I remember the bottle-top
green of the bay
ferry whiff
bounce of a
wharf
that was
the harbour side
ocean a
hill away
the world
was quite unmapped
(as I found
out later when I ran off)
off to
America at an early age
from
Balmoral Beach
I would
learn to swim on the way
you'd want
to get into that water
it's all
summer here
the
population salted
sidere
mens eadem mutato
they kept
me quite literally on a leash
how could I
have suspected a poem?
clouds and
the blue
and
everything clearly
splinters
in white paint
the
tram came down the middle of the road
I was still
coming into the world
soon
I would write 'A Day at the Beach'
much
later, still a lifetime ago
North
Narrabeen -- sauterne from a milkshake container
and
throwing up in the surf
that
was a dizzy experiment!
I do
remember things before
goanna
alongside, the plumber coming in
without
knocking, and winter
burnt my
bum on the radiator
don't
remember crying
but I must
have done
so many
things I could and would be
but mum
would say
'don't
drive in the rain', 'not at night'
'don't
sleep over there in the dust and the cold'
it's
not what you remember
it's
getting
back to there
all those
fears of some primitive difference
make me who
I am
love of
rose fingered dawn
(so seldom
seen)
it doesn't
matter that they've gone
you are
what you have always been
the 'green
grass' was bamboo
in those
days the world went as far as my aunt's
and I hid
the lettuce sandwich
in the sand
next to the driveway
no one
would ever find out
growl more
of late
I call that
atavism
still the
day's not quite washed out
plenty of
beaches here
it's only
in the mirror you see
the one on
the shore who sets out to swim
with the
parents still on a leash
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