A recognisable moment there in a fine narrative poem. (I'll play
Crossroads, the Robt Johnson version, now to kick off 2014 - then the
Clapton one. Brilliant stuff.)
Andrew
On 1 January 2014 00:20, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> First for 2014 is a reworked job. Greetings all for new year.
>
> Bill
>
>
> Crossroads
>
> i
>
> I was standing at the crossroads. Port Fairy.
> 1986. I was not alone.
>
> Two, maybe three hundred people stood at the crossroads
> that Saturday night. Milling about.
>
> Strange expression, milling. As if we were making something.
> Something more than a ragged circle,
>
> looking in.
> The corner streetlight shone through flicking insects
>
> on glistening black skin.
> Her headband was not up to the task
>
> of absorbing night sweat, righteous lather.
> Left hand brandishing a can of VB,
>
> right hand dismissing the concerns of a host
> of scraggy Commancheros, whose black bikes,
>
> evenly reversed to the kerb outside The Stump,
> one-eyed the lot of us.
>
>
> ii
>
> Younger than either the Aboriginal woman
> or any of the bikers, two policemen,
>
> both sporting blue short-sleeved shirts bearing
> crease-marks ironed in that folk festival morning,
>
> paced uneasily, making brief eye contact
> with anyone speaking
>
> but mostly gazed over heads,
> expectantly.
>
>
> iii
>
>
> It had started so simply. Sun had started
> to miss the tables dragged out to the front of the pub.
>
> From the shadow of the public bar,
> A black flash tripped or kicked an unexpected chair,
>
> sending it up on two legs, balancing,
> before toppling into the neatly parked Triumph Bonneville,
>
> which, almost graciously, folded down in the dust.
> One glance, instant decision.
>
> Off. Up and over the picket fence next door.
> Black legs pounding across paspalum.
>
> He was over the next fence before
> a single Commanchero was at the first.
>
> Punters piled out of the pub.
> Half a dozen of the least tubby bikers set off
>
> across the backyards of Port Fairy
> in search of Koori quarry.
>
> The rest assembled by their bikes, muttering,
> gesticulating, beers forgotten on tables, on grass.
>
>
> iv
>
> The shaping up at the crossroads might have begun
> when one of the Commancheros, suddenly sober, accused:
>
> ‘That’s his girlfriend. She was in the bar this arvo.’
> Or maybe she taunted them.
>
> I don’t know. But I was there.
> With all the others. Massing.
>
> Not at High Noon. But at High Closing Time
> At 10 to 11. On a Saturday night.
>
> Distant violin and footstomp still, over at The Vic
> But folkies are not an incendiary bunch.
>
> ‘Yaargh, ya weak bastards, all o’yez,’
> she spat, before turning and making her way
>
> through an easily parting channel of onlookers.
> Hairy Commancheros, police, folkers, me. Bitumenised.
>
> bw
>
>
>
>
>
>
--
Andrew
http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
'Undercover of Lightness'
http://walleahpress.com.au/recent-publications.html
'Shikibu Shuffle'
http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/new-from-aboveground-press-shikibu.html
|