Whoops, those gaps should not be there in new stanzas one and three.
Bill
On Thu, 30 Nov 2017 at 7:32 AM, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Thanks, Sheila. Yes, I didn't know it but everything led to the rifle and
> I just knew that was the end of the reverie. Andrew, Thinking again, I will
> leave out creation of narrative. I know you have written prose poems like
> 'The next poem' and your Linfen poems. They are more 'block' poems. Maybe I
> can aerate mine differently as a prose poem, Doug.
>
> Bakewell Street 2
>
> On the corner of Thunder Street, Bendigo, a twisted wire front fence,
> groany gate,
> springy Buffalo-grassed front lawn. Echo-less sound of tin-lid postbox
> screeching open, plopping flat shut after letter removal. Slight give of
> worn boards on front porch with first footfall from top brick step. Iron
> rungs reaching from concrete piers. Grandma Beat's place. Mum's Mum.
>
> After lunch, go outside and play. Brother Dan and I jumping from one post
> to the other. Making up games with rules and consequences. Don't be
> caught on the exposed veranda when a rare passing car aligns with you.
> Home pillars the only safe zones. Running the bee gauntlet up lavender
> path beneath wind-rattling wooden lattice.
>
> Thin water-stained plywood walls bulging. High plate shelf on wall. Framed
> photos;
> young Mum’s colourised rosy cheeks. Aunt Hazel in sepia WAAF uniform.
> Hovering inside in heat. Gal roof stretching, popping in sun. Unused front
> lounge room. Grandma hulked in winter knitting-by-woodstove position.
> Pantry/scullery, cutlery dead-clanking on sink, muted by flour bins,
> Brockhoff biscuit tins. Sour fumes from Uncle Rex's Abbots Lager 'soldier',
> fresh from fridge, opened by feigned accident. Grandma's wink as she passes
> the open bottle over the fence to grateful Mr Hennerbury next door.
> Warm-valved tone of walnut veneer radio through riffling curtained speaker.
> Spring-loaded back door's ping/clunk.
>
> Stretched stiff wire backyard prop clothesline. Sheets billowing high
> over Mr Kinsmore's backyard caravan. Disused chookshed with dry,
> ignitable overhanging potato vine. Long rusty tin shed, once stables,
> powdery dirt floor. Stacked, spidersome cardboard suitcases. Finding
> gold-tipped Black Sobranies. Flat match scrape, coughing.
>
> Full length dark brown leather coat hanging behind external laundry door.
> Framed, faded portrait of flowing-cloaked de Valera, hanging skewiff. Bait
> yabbies corralled in laundry trough overnight, crawling in wet hessian bags
> filled with pungent gum leaves. Fishing nets, hooks, corks, spread on back
> lawn, in readiness for pre-dawn getaway to Axe Creek.
>
> Groping in darkness, through hanging dresses, for hiding place of tiny
> glass jar full of fossicked gold specks in the back of sleep-out wardrobe.
> Grandpa's rifle.
>
> bw
> 30.11.17
>
> Bill
>
>
> On Thu, 30 Nov 2017 at 7:11 AM, Sheila Murphy <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>> Bill,
>>
>> This is very impressive. One thing that I noticed that bespeaks the
>> miracle
>> of poetry is the arrival at a rifle as the inverse of the rifle's own
>> function. Very chic. You cannot force such things. They are poetry.
>>
>> Bravo! Sheila
>>
>
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