Michael Williamson: Two Poems

Morning Tea in the Garden

After the grass was raked, and the gardens done,

our kitchen radio hectored bakelite news. The sea-green lino

swayed deep kelps of light. Along the front lawn’s

terrazzo tile path, red poppies, still aflame. Once picked,

their ends were burnt for longer life in the sunlit vase.

From the grape arbour, his concrete path turned

to the calsomine painted toilet by his shed. Blue-grey rosemary

covered the clay-filled bomb-shelter trenches.

On an old gramophone, amidst his tools, black vinyl songs

crackled his universe. Heaven, yes, but he must have kept

his shed. Motes of dust orbited through rays of sun

into drapes of shadow, to slip beyond and meet him in light.

In routine days adult faces carried final memories

they didn’t speak of. Fifty years old, so elderly

her rimless glasses, she kept vigil even in laughter.

Army trucks and field guns rolled past

one more year. Shop-fronts’ brown awnings gone,

for mothers, new pastel outfits and cake-decorating.

Fathers worked slide rules until their wives’ silk dresses

rippled rainbow stripes for nights out.

On a sepia photograph tinted with colour, under a giant

mulberry tree, ladies rest with china cups. I’ve been told

that’s when she read them his single postcard from the front:

it ended, “Happy Easter! Love to all—Cheerio!”

The photo shows an empty chair, the card, their lives.

Michael Williamson

Iron Ore Train

There is a black dot

jiggling in the shimmer.

The metallic lowing of the locomotive,

now an orange icon swimming in heat,

nears our station’s Victorian metal lace and steeple roof

that hold last century’s lost prosperity and population.

Our station master wears a black, gold-braided,

nineteenth century suit. Up in the darkest crevice,

hangs a small black umbrella, a flying fox.

I asked the station manager, could we get him water.

No, he’ll wait for the night train. It might be him,

maybe another, who’ll be back tomorrow.

It’s genetic, they say. Now the rust-red,

yellow-nosed, diesel-electric engines

cruise gently along the hundred-metre platform.

The driver slows to a brief walk, the station manager

leaves his radio, they throw some jokes around.

Two kilometres of iron ore cars clunk smoothly along

a full five minutes. The wooden bench

shines with a century’s timetables.

Michael Williamson