Barbara Fisher: Two Poems

Sydney to Melbourne

If you didn’t have a “sleeper”

on the old night train to Melbourne

they called it “sitting up”,

whether or not you reclined

with a cushion and a rug

and a paper bag of sandwiches

to savour in the dark.

Such was my childhood travel

returning to boarding school,

sleeping, waking, sleeping

and opening my eyes at dawn

to bleached and empty paddocks

stained with rosy light

and at melancholy intervals

a litany of dark blue hoardings

advertising Dr Morse’s

Indian Root Pills.

What were they for?

And who was Dr Morse?

They haunted me

and seemed at one with the ache

of loneliness and longing

for family and home

Barbara Fisher

White

Quite a word—five letters to bear

a load of meaning, source of suspicion

for those of colour, imperial burden

for those who were not. Symbol of virtue,

yet evil so often whitewashed,

pallor of fear or sickness, white noise

for escapees from tinnitis and the infamous

white feather of cowardice handed to lads

in two world wars because they looked like men,

so many a mother’s white-haired boy

joined up and died at seventeen.

Better to think of lilies,

white weddings and white ties,

clothes for cricket, tennis, white goods

for food and washing, white damask

for the table and white on white embroidery.

Better to remember white-water rafting

and the ocean’s white horses or the

garden’s white admiral butterfly.

Nor can I forget the gift I know will be

a huge white elephant, not to mention

the little lie I will tell when I receive it.

Barbara Fisher