Poetics – Trai_n_n_n_n_n_n_n_n_s
It was a steam train
Sweet steam scents hustled round the carriages in the early evening light
Inside
The stiff pews vinyled in deep greens or matt black
Waited for patience to deal with them on the long journey
Our long journey was from Sydney and west to the Blue Mountains
To the gateway of the Blue Mountains
Springwood
I don't remember much about the journey
(I was just a very young child)
But the swaying motion gave me
A fickle calmness
A peace
I hadn't felt in days
Finally
We reached a station that loomed
With blaring lights
From the dark of darkness
Light flashed across my mother's face
It was marbled
Cold
Her hat
Her black
Sweeping hat
Crushed all sense
That this was my mother
Taking me on some adventure
There was just the feeling
That we were boxed here
Carted to an Auntie's home
(An auntie I had never met)
And somehow
This Auntie would
Soothe some balm
And somehow
The recent death of my father
Would be
All right
AUSTRALIA ~ The Antipodes
I love a sunburnt country / A land of sweeping plains / Of ragged mountain ranges / Of droughts and flooding rains / I love her far horizons / I love her jewel-sea / Her beauty and her terror / The wide brown land for me / ~ Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1968)
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Trai_n_n_n_n_n_n_n_n_s
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Tasmania
A place of beauty in the Western Tiers
Tasmania
View near Blackwood Park Cottages, Mole Creek
New Landscapes
New Worlds
The Inner Light of the Spirit
The Spirit of Inner Light
Lady Gemma
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6 comments:
i hope that it would...ah no wonder the ride is so real to you...the death of a father or any parent is so hard...the journey though you capture it well...
Ahh... a very moving reflection of a traumatic childhood memory. Blessings.
~laurie
can you believe, i was in sydney for 4 weeks on business and so wanted to make this train ride to the blue mountains but didn't manage to fit it in...still sad about this...so thanks for taking me there with your words..
Like a train ride, this moves calmly and inexorably to its destination, taking us through a moment that seems passive, like something seen out the train window passing, but of course, remains always, in that unique way our childhood losses and sorrows do. A fine poem, Gemma.
This train trip transformed in these three lines "Her black
Sweeping hat
Crushed all sense"
And the poem took a child into our hearts.
Sensitive and real.
Well done.
G
These childhood journeys and the forays into memory to unearth them are some of the hardest of all. You show us truth with calm clarity and compassion. Thank you.
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