Between Shingle Creek and Fruitlands
Cast your mind back to the first time you came this way,
the road windy, corrugated, dusty,
the surface mostly the colour of yellow clay, cuttings
stained with the leer of water seeping.
On the left the ever-ascending slopes,
the Old Man Range, white flecks
in blue gullys near the summit,
and your young old man wondering when
we’d ever get to Alexandra, your mum complaining
about ‘the blessed dust’, both of them
cursing the ‘wash-board surface’ and you thinking
about the number of times she told your father
that ‘it didn’t matter’ when it clearly did. And that
was the way it always was with them,
it is with you, it is, period. Until, you might say,
something happens that’s never happened before.
Like love came back and sent hate packing
never to return, and peace of mind arrived
like a dove from afar, decided to stay, and you
no longer dreamed of what might have been.
Brian Turner
More poems in ‘The view from here’ series
The view from here — Ian WeddeTakahe — Bill Manhire
Cilla, writing — Elizabeth Smither
h e l l o a n d g o o d b y e — Michele Leggott
Breach — Cilla McQueen
In these troubled times — Vincent O'Sullivan
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