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ARTS AND CULTURE

Matchbox dreams

  • 28 October 2019

 

Selected poems

 

Matchbox dreams

The dirt ploughed easily under our bulldozer fists

After rain it was still dust underneath; roadworks were brisk

 

Kangaroos down from Mt Ainslie pooped in our miniature town

new boulders for the centre of our roundabouts

Around and out — the arteries in the front garden ended

in neat driveways bumper to bumper with matchbox cars

 

She had the best spot embraced in the roots of a silver birch

I had a purple Torana to her clutzy green station wagon

 

She raced over trailing roads; I neatly parked in my garage

of low hung shrub decorated with flower petal furniture

 

Round and round we drove our matchbox dreams

until something told us we were going nowhere

 

Ended up old in grid-patterned cities known as the real world

The matchbox cars chipping themselves silver

 

jostling in a box moved and stored and moved

waiting for the lights to change again

 

 

Civic carousel

Horses in revolution

entrance young eyes with their prancing

They pull their hands free of yours to give chase

A competition of brothers

riders without horses

 

Called back

yes, sing out that it is time

 

Instructions: stretch cloth full length of arms doing the Jesus thing on the cross

fold lengthwise

                           rotate in a rhythm to form a cushioning band

                           of red and green kitenge

 

Pneumatic organ music ends

Horses stop, the musical chairs enthusiasts of the equine world

The children return

 

Further instructions: get youngest child to climb up

                                        tie the cushioned band of cloth

harness him secure

 

Set off, toddler riding high, up and down on your back

 

Older child, usurped to walk will protest loudly

competing with the laughs of the carousel children

competing with the organ music starting up again

competing with the grind of all the pretty horses up and down and round

 

Maternal stillness eases the noise; your eyes fall

on your first-born like a benediction

you finished to cry now?

 

Hands hold

steadily you move in one direction on

 

 

Park dance

the council workers

wear their orange vests

to camouflage them in the autumn

 

in the park

with rakes not common or garden

              (industrial, edges 2 foot long)

they shepherd leaves into volcano piles

a ballet

rhythm accumulating on a step, in

to the leaves

then back out

to the edge

alternating, circling, a right foot, a left

the rakes dancing never kissing

 

plovers waiting to see what turns up

 

 

Jane Downing has poems published around Australia