Graeme Hetherington: Two poems

Point of View

Genetically underprivileged

Descendants of convicts and blacks,

Who died of illnesses the first

Transmitted crossing with them, sprawl

Around a Hobart shopping mall.

Signs of spasticity and Down’s

Syndrome I know from playing in

Childhood with my afflicted kin

Abound, as in old age I lurch

And stumble through, returned from years

Away as an escape from this

Ugliness only now to face

The music, glimpse my dribble-stained

T-shirt in windows, and in vague

Amazement bite my tongue as I

Snap shut my stammer-prone slack mouth.

Graeme Hetherington

Why I Don’t Have a Car

I got off to a rotten start

With cars via my old man’s first,

The only one in our small town

At World War’s end, a Yank-swank Chev

The locals came to look at, touch,

To scratch and leave bright silver lines

I rubbed with spit to at least dull,

Though guiltily, as if perhaps

I’d sleep-walked and done it myself.

Obsessively, he lavished care,

All spare time on this “thing” which cost

Him my love as well as the earth.

A chamois-leather polished green,

It mocked my jealousy, my in-

Ability to lever free

A tyre’s holed inner tube without

Pinching and puncturing again.

And when, to make amends he taught

Graeme Hetherington