Being In Our Other Home

A wet week of it and we’re
about tuckered out from a
face to face confrontation
with less than public selves.

The dogs smell vaguely of a
dampness, tho’ less a reek
with background nuance
than malodorous scent.

It permeates closeness in a
shared space & nose now
rebels; packed & weighed
I’m ready to escape – soon

to leave for Sydney care of
Virgin Air, a lightness in the
step and eyes brightening
with sure prospects of seeing

smiling faces, hands reaching,
the embrace of arms familiar, of
voices greeting, of knowing care &
being in our other home again.
© 10 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

Music From The Car Park

The music from the car park by the pier
still lingers on. All the years the buskers
played guitar, sang of great loves lost in
melancholy song for coins I learned the
ways of words, mingled with the throng
of weekend visitors who ambled by. For

me the buskers were all poets heard with
great respect. I yearned to join but knew
my tuneless voice would earn me less a
place than ridicule expects. Time amends
and progress brought the ferry back; we
saw the change in subtle ways – days of

melancholy died. Banjo and harmonica
arrived, violins, the pipes, a flute, humour
lent an air now vibrantly alight, cries were
heard to echo late into the night. Change
again with rock and roll which didn’t suit
my mother’s soul although we dared to

dance real slow. Musicians came to play
the tunes we learned in living rooms from
gramophones played loud; muso’s joined
to jam in groups without a cent to pay the

rent. Busking died. I cried of loneliness in
words I wrote I’d hoped to sing, sadness
wringing when the Council changed their
zoning laws and banned the gatherings –

built a fence. In all the years the buskers
sang their melancholy songs no silence
damned the car park by the pier; it echoes
now, an eerie hollowness I can’t express in
faithful words – and wont with due respect.
© 21 December 2007, I. D. Carswell