David Hume – A Spit Of A Village

A Dream Washed Up

She rests,

like a hundred others,

ignored and forgot.

Tricycle cradled,

blackberry wreathed

and thistle jewelled,

her complexion

blushed copper green.

Just three

slow declining miles

from her riverside home.

Face pointed away,

eyes spider blind,

she succumbs to blister and rot

as other such

ornaments rust.

A dream

from a foundered romance.

A ragged reminder

of time drifted by.

Love locked,

by rib, plank and quarter knee,

she sinks back

to the earth.

Aurora

Drunk I have slept beneath distended moons

and stirring to the wail of two string tunes

Westward from the Middle Kingdom I roamed

to climb peaks as days thoughts were ignited.

Then lazed entranced in peasants earthen homes,

as limestone voids were illuminated.

At the meeting of three nations I camped

and on through the High Atlas snows I tramped.

Along vertiginous highways I cruised

and on lonely Pacific beaches paused

to admire the final blush of the day.

But in returning home I have at last,

as spring arises and winter has passed,

drunk in the lights of the southern array.

A Spit of a Village

Listen to the olds and their apple crate tones,

rising in confident doubt, falling with age and certainty.

They speak of berried hills and sugar rolling fast,

shops with broad panes rippling light’s intensity

as soft wind disturbs the flow of nature’s glass.

They recall a time of whistles and steam,

tramways and weirs that turned mills and onward flowed.

Weatherboard and corro tin on Dutch hipped rooves,

dirt track spurs from a single cobbled road

that too briefly clipped to the clop of horses hooves.

Bounded and torn by John and Mary,

north and south, a noisy divorce that troubled my youth.

A violent history of superstitious tribes,

that without care for proof argued for truth

but thanks to common sense and high brick common ground no longer abides.

Where once were shop shelves lined with goods,

walls and ceilings are packed with fibre and windows blind

to abate the roll of nature’s a/c ripped from the hills.

Whilst at kitchen tables and armchairs, one will find

the rattle of sectioned trays and rainbows of life sustaining pills.

And as winter rolls near so too the fog

that like wool on wire snags in wooded grove

and for days barely lifts above the hip low window.

Fog that can soften or toughen the newcomers resolve

to fly north or stay and marvel at the morning glow

and the unseen slapping lap from jetty to highway.

The creeping ebb of attempted inundation

of reclaimed land that in summer spins and winter kicks.

Heaving shoulders, gliding past, eight pairs in unison

and at the end of the day a vinegar whiff of the best fish and chips.

There is constancy in this spit of a town.

The tick and tack of sheet on mast.

The pregnant middle of fair curved double enders.

Taught woven hawsers holding fast

and the expectant squeal of pine and oak on sun bleached rubber fenders.

Yet as the river rests quiet.

Among the cargo of passing folk the appeal to settle, to feel at ease,

set down new history, of peace, and wealth of river views,

is as constant as the late afternoon southerly breeze

that like the jarring real estate signs, forever renews

and lifts and carries voices that clatter in the damp and scented air.

Voices shaped by cities of concrete and steel

or rasping parched, cracking in the cold like desert stones.

That in time will mellow in rhythm, in intonation and gather a feel

and appreciate the cadence of those reverberant apple crate tones.

David Hume is a writer from southern Tasmania, where he lives self-sufficiently off grid. He holds a PhD from the University of Tasmania and has published poetry in Blue Nib and ICOE Press. He has also written extensively about tourism, and ceramic art.

‘A Dream Washed Up’ and ‘Aurora’ appear in his current chapbook A Tale of Two Holes.