Tales within tales, & then that final couplet: neatly done, Max.
On 2013-05-21, at 6:25 PM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> St Kilda
>
> Googling 'St Kilda'
> as this chap idly did
> having moved to a flat
> in St Kilda Road -
>
> clicked on 'images',
> and what came up? -
> that warm bayside
> street-life suburb:
>
> delicatessens,
> disunited nations
> of bling boutiques and
> 'ethnic' restaurants;
>
> raucous Luna Park;
> a garden-plots commune;
> rows of phoenix palms,
> pony rides beneath them;
>
> walks to the pier cafe;
> fairy penguins at night
> in breakwater crevices,
> protected native rats.
>
> The fierce home
> of a football team.
> Heat wave ending
> in sea-borne cool change.
>
> Also: a barren Scottish
> island, ruined cottages -
> their word was 'sheilings' -
> painful vacancy
>
> of depopulation.
> What might they share,
> have in common?
> Those islanders
>
> emigrated here?
> Hardly. History
> mentions a schooner,
> 'Lady of St Kilda'
>
> anchored by this beach
> setting ashore its
> British cargo and folk.
> Migrants' mixed luck;
>
> the need of naming
> a place whose naming
> by Aboriginals was lost
> when they were moved on.
>
> Gippsland, to the east -
> that's where crofters
> dislodged from Scotland
> moved in, dislodging
>
> those Aboriginals.
> Elbow your way now
> through the evening
> throngs of St Kilda -
>
> moving on,
> moving along,
> living in an absent-
> minded present -
>
> are the old disruptions
> done with, buried? -
> unknown, untold,
> disremembered?
>
> At the board-sports HQ
> there's a webcam scanning
> West St Kilda Beach,
> tide and sky, night and day.
>
> From home you can watch,
> if they're out, the tough young
> wetsuits sailboarding,
> windsurfing, kiteboarding -
>
> decide whether to join them -
> or take the dogs down
> for an off-leash romp,
> present in the present.
>
> At the moment there's
> just one figure trudging south
> and raindrops on the webcam lens
> like an eye-witness's tears.
Douglas Barbour
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is a lovely thing.
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like the vapors,
from the rock
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