The photographs that inspired this trilogy of poems were collected at a market stall of old pictures, books and other trinkets, along with some other black and white images of bush walkers and wilderness shots. It was part of my research into the framing of the Tasmanian wilderness and the development of ecotourism.
More recently it has been hastily hung in my shed, a sea container where I brew beer, make cheese and hang my charcuterie. It was then, always inevitable that it would generate at least one poem. The following three will probably make most sense to older Tasmanians with a long standing interest in the environment. Now, with the flooding of Lake Pedder reaching an unwelcome milestone it is right to share them.
Images by Don Stephens and Associates, (undated) black and white photographs.
Nine Pennies
Nine pennies
spread on my palm.
More difficult to grasp
than a silver shilling.
More rare,
more valuable
than that swallowed
from the bottom of a glass.
Without head or tail,
yet over time uncounted cast.
These nine pennies
spread on my palm
This nine pence
I hold.
Plucked from the well
of high mountain wish.
Of lake sold
for a shilling.
Of wishes unfulfilled,
wealth uncollected.
Uncounted
These nine pennies
I save.
This nine pence
to be never a shilling.
These nine pennies.
That like a magician’s trick
fell from my ears,
grew beneath my tongue,
under my chin.
Conjurer’s coins
that dropped
from my mind.
To one day
rest on my eyes.
These nine pennies
spread on my palm.
This nine pence
that rattles in my fist.
That wears my pockets thin.
Weighted clunk.
Gravitas bound.
These nine pennies
that inspire this verse
This nine pence.
This paucity.
This poet’s purse.
These nine pennies
Collected
This nine pence
of nine days visited.
What will we souvenir
In a time of unbounded leisure,
of certified facsimile.
When no more can be found
the momentary pleasure,
sensuous tactility
of nature unbound.
When these nine pennies,
in my palm, to you I present.
When this nine pence
brings to mind
beauty from the depth
lost to the loan
of a shilling too quickly spent.
2
Nine Pennies from an Empty Quarter
(A haiku series in the Tanka tradition of call and reply)
Long before pennies
came footprints to make measure.
Trod and washed away.
Nine times they came and marvelled.
Nine times leaving they argued.
Spread on my palm.
Balanced in gentle caress.
Stones lifted from earth.
Nine times they took a little.
Nine shelves for nine keepsakes.
Emptiness is space
filled with spirits and goodness.
Now lost and homeless.
Pebbles plucked from Pedder’s shore
play with time and memory.
Blinkered, blanded and bleached.
Beauty retracted.
Sadly submerged Serpentine.
The unseeing surveying
valley and breath left unfelt.
Ten millennia
formed, harboured, safe and sheltered.
Nine souls now wander.
Lost in time of space denounced,
quartzite cradle darkly cast.
Light will again mountain spark.
Good sense will return
and good folk question the dark.
Nine pebbles small, flat and round,
will make circles in stillness.
Falling into shallow pool,
a heartbeat will rise,
and ripples revive goodness.
3
Two of Nine
Lolly says she couldn’t give tuppence
for the man on tv,
with his graphs and ordinaries.
Then she takes two pebbles
from the mantelpiece
and says these two pennies,
that belong to her and Pops
are the most precious.
Pops laughs when Lolly says that
and Lolly gives him one of those looks.
The type I get when I’m in trouble.
So I don’t tell Lolly that their just rocks.
Pops takes no notice
and grumbles on.
He says they don’t belong to them.
“They belong to the lake
that scoured them in the deep.
That washed them onto the beach.
They were cast by heat and fire.
Minted under the weight of a million deaths
that feed our mother Gaia.”
Lolly laughs when Pops gets like that.
But I can see that once she liked it.
She calls it pulpity.
Pops laughs too.
Then he usually goes quiet
and sometimes disappears for a bit.
Lolly lets me play with her penny.
She says it’s like her wedding ring.
She says it’s more precious
than any ring, or stupid ceremony could ever be.
Lolly and Pops don’t like religion.
Lolly calls it stupid and Pops calls it evil.
They both say a good walk in the mountains
is all you need to feed your soul.
Pops always says, “All religion does is breed hate and war and…”
Then, before he gets all pulpity again,
he sits down and tells me a story
about how once him and Lolly,
when they were young,
went to see a big big church
in a faraway place.
Where inside the church
was made of fine silk and gold
And it was warm.
And outside were beggars in rags.
And it was cold.
And inside they passed a silver plate
around and spoke in song
and you were supposed to give money.
And outside they shook a rusty tin
and looked into your eyes.
And how you want to take them inside
but are not allowed.
Lolly says the church should give
and points to the penny in my hand.
“Like this one.” She says.
Then tells me more about the wish
she and Pops made
and how it came true.
I wish Lolly and Pops would take me
to their special beach.
Lolly says she wishes she could.
Then Pops grumbles
“They killed it
and a thousand wishes too.
They rest fathoms deep.
Drowned for a shilling.
In the name of…”
Then he says words I’m not allowed to.
And Lolly gives him one of those looks.
And Pops says “I know.”
And picks up the other penny and tells me
“This was probably the last wish the lake gave.
But you know what.
There are still mountains,
still high mountain lakes
and there is still our river.”
And Lolly adds
“And still people walking the mountains
and falling in love.
And still nature gives them nice things
to care for,
to keep them coming back.
One day, when you’re bigger,
you can walk in the mountains
and sit in a long boat
on a dark lake
and watch the stars.
And she puts Pops’s penny in my other hand
and folds up my fingers.
And the pennies are nice
and warm and I hold them together tight.
And she says,
“You can take me and Pops with you.”
David L Hume Third Quarter 2020
David L Hume holds a PhD from the University of Tasmania. He is the author of Tourist Art and Souvenirs: The Material Culture of Tourism (Routledge), the chapbook of poems A Tale of Two Holes, and numerous articles on ceramic art. He lives off grid in the Huon Valley.
