Selected poems
Headland daydreaming
These things said he ... Our friend Lazarus sleepeth;
but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep. John 11:11
Dawn, and grey gums hang hushed over Abraham's
Bosom, the water ruddy in the creek: This place is new
to my son, who doesn't know that satin bowerbirds
pilfer the brush and has not heard the hardwood bridge
we cross. He's busy tracing each scribble in each gum,
and my hands are full of his hands, faintly heavy —
faintly delicate. A towering deciduous fig
hangs over us; its branches are neural pathways
thin at their tips the way memories thin in time. Heath begins
to flatten along the 'wreck walk' while bloodwoods submerge
beneath the calls of New Holland Honeyeaters
which flicker between combs of coastal banksia and a haze
of scrub she-oaks in brambles. Their greyness disorients,
and we find ourselves guided by the thrum of the ocean.
My boy doesn't speak the language of this land, sand gnaws
at his heels — we stop three times to pour it out, fine as ash.
I know this walk well, its contours and undulations —
recollections of push-bike rides of my youth. The story
of SS Merimbula who heaved herself against the rock ledge
at Whale Point. She survived, but laid herself to the mercy
of the waves and wash of time. Now, tea-tree leaves wound
legs with a salty dew as we emerge from the narrowing
path, our barren Via Dolorosa. Last night, the rock pools emptied
themselves into one another and now the boy is out clutching
at crabs. Gone, are pied oyster catchers, deckhands and travellers.
The last passenger-liner abandoned to the perpetual swallowing
of the tide. The air is seaweed and spray — I pluck periwinkles
from their solitude and throw them into the sunburnt ribs
of her bow. His mother is here too. She's holding a new-born,
milk white like the sands on our feet and cawing back to the black
cockatoos we passed earlier. This time I'll share:
here is where the ashes of their grandfather sleep.
On Visiting Cape St George Lighthouse; or, Standing between you and the rock face
For nothing was simply one thing.
The other Lighthouse was true too.
—Virginia Woolf
The moon holds itself bright and fat
in an August sky,
we follow the brocade hem of sandstone cliffs
and watch the whitewash that swells on the rocks like wind-swept cobwebs.
The horizon is an opal necklace, ethereal
and at rest on the quiver of day's last light.
The tea trees and coastal saltbush freckle the heath,
while I wrap your hand in mine
like the shells you now smuggle in your pockets.
In Daraga, this land is for the sea eagles
but tonight, they're the flightless
keepers of a broken lighthouse.
Like a sacked city, it kneels at the close of day and raises its stones for alms.
Your balm is a child's smile
and intermittent shrieks
cascading from the collapsed dome.
We taste the salt in the wet of our eyes and lookout
to see the primeval procession
of humpbacks passing like laconic wind.
Eleven children once played these cliffs,
carved their names
their dreams in wisps of air
before the brickfielder turned them to dust. Here their maypole,
there wooden horses, and in the papers,
the fishing pole that cast their father
to bull sharks. But, for you the walls are an Arthurian Keep
and you run — hand outstretched
like a sail in the sky, waiting for mine in reply.
Pieces of recollection
Axonopus compressus is not a soft lawn. When short
it cuts at the webbing of your feet, leaving thin
red tongue marks in the grooves of the sole. 'Tolerant,
hardwearing, favourite of infertile soil.' On our trips
to Currarong, it was my job to mow. I'd whip the old
two-stroke Victa, one foot on the rear wheel, a throw
of the wrist in a cracking arc to the wind. Two coughs,
full throttle and set a straight line. My stride tuned
to the reverberations and melody of its muttering.
Sucking in monoxide and fresh cut clippings, a two dollar
per-gallon perfume and filmy sweat coating for my work.
My father would make sure the Four-X beer cans and broken
bottles were cleaned from the cinder block fire place —
built by my grandfather to hide the secret remnants
of his last visit. We weren't to see the half burned
boxes and Bic lighters scattered on the hearth. Evenings
round the fire, we'd watch the bream caught at Long Beach
browning on the rusted grill. Embers warming jacket
potatoes, pumpkin, onion slices, and rings of pineapple.
We'd sit on the hardwood pew he crafted, banana chairs
or the old splitter stump, its top scourged like a convict's
back. There in the warm shade of night I'd push a slither of sooty
concrete back into its place, revealing glass beneath—
a memory, small as the empty matchbox he'd left on the lawn.
Banana cutting
In storms, one of those blustering summer furies,
my sister and I listened to the pounding hearts
above and wondered if water would find its way
through cracked paint to stain the wallpaper with a tea
-red tidemark. The banana fronds slapping and whipping
the glass panes and fibro walls kept us up all night
And I knew come morning I'd take a mattock
to their base, slash 'til only a wet slop was left,
a slough of half cut trunks, roots and strands like fibre
glass. Its sugary sap glistening on the blade
and chunks of flesh smatter my face, like mashed garlic.
A squelch of fluid gushed, peeling its ringed skin
(I knew was wounding them for being) — too close, untamed.
Their fruit never ripened, never grew tall enough
for shade. After the cutting came a heavy dose
of round-Up into weeping bruise. Each year they'd swell
back the same and that night with each lightening burst
our jolted smiles watched the grey gums light up like ghosts.
Begin again
'And hope's a gift you earn.'
— Mark Tredennick 'Running into my youth'
On the country lane
lichens are a palliative for fence posts
Falling into their age, clouds spill over the hills and I ache to
Remember the running wind in my ears. I set out to feel ice
Throbs of air in my chest, as potholes betray road edges and swell
For rain — a pathway in genetic erosion. My joints spurn stones
That calcify themselves to rock walls
lining meadows where winter
Has left its stain in folded reeds along the creek. Each step starts
With grit and sorrow
while memories of the body I once had
Pass. A mixture of pain and prednisone brings hope of weeping grass
Broken by heavy footprints. In the air, a brown falcon hovers
Over its mark in breathless suspension
like a runner caught
on the blocks;
I'm reminded of muscles tensioned for the gun's release
And sense legs slow to follow the heart's intent. But, the gift is in
Beginning
and discomfort finds a way to numb the bones' protest,
Where once life overtook and movement became a ramshackle dream.
In the field an iron barn collapses its roof at one end,
Herefords huddle for shelter, and for rest,
and it's enough to know
The orchestra of wind and foot-fall still play the same melody.
Peter Ramm has regularly published academic articles in the English and History Teacher's Association journals and as an emerging poet has published poems with the Red Room Company, winning their 2017 Poetry Object competition and was Highly Commended in the Henry Lawson Memorial and Literary Society Poetry Competition. He finds inspiration in the landscape and people of South Eastern NSW.