Ah b'leve ah won't be sinking down, then, on the strength of your praise, Andrew.
Cheers,
Bill
> On 1 Jan 2014, at 2:14 pm, Andrew Burke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> 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
>
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