Elizabeth Owen: Two Poems

The Man

I was seven.

Mum was always late.

I was the last girl picked up from school most days.

There was a tree by the school fence where I used to wait.

I would walk around it seven times in one direction. Then I would walk around it seven times in the other.

Seven was my age. Seven was a magic age. One day a man came up to me.

I didn’t know what to do.

Mrs Gray was walking up the street.

Mrs Gray was the mother of my friend, Mandy. Mrs Gray was a Commissioner of Guides.

She would know what to do.

Mrs Gray told the man to go away.

The man went away.

Mum came.

I never told her about the man.

Elizabeth Owen

Our Father the Good Driver

Hurtling along the highway—

the Princes of course,

a newly-surfaced

bitumen ring around Australia—

we are a band of five:

my brother and sister,

sensible and asleep,

cocooned on the folded down seat;

Mum, the ever-anxious

front seat driver,

keeping watch

in case Dad falters;

and I, uncomfortable between

the jutting wheel rims of the tray,

dreaming of elsewhere

but taking it all in

while Dad works the gears.

“What do you think of

when you drive,”

asks Mum pensively.

“I think of driving,” he replies.

So we’re off to Brisbane,

(or is it Shangri-la),

reason unknown,

only to turn around

on arrival and start home.

Our family,

each of us living a separate dream,

squashed in the dark

in the two-tone green Holden station wagon,

is hurtling up the highway,

safe in the control of

Our Father the Good Driver.

Elizabeth Owen