Ross Jackson: ‘Observing L.S. Lowry’s people’ and ‘Scraps of my beginning’

Observing L.S. Lowry’s people

between the mills they circulate
figures in coats and scarves
and outsized hats, the dogs and cripples
the mothers who push prams
on ash-coloured pavements

twig-legged children
with pit-boot hoofs kick
stones down steep brick stairs
whilst forward-sloping fathers
forge along beside iron railings

like the smell of last night’s dinner
he’s put them in everywhere
all of Stockport moving sideways
through din and smoke
and the viaduct above them all

Ross Jackson

Scraps of my beginning

instead of kindy, learning was listening to Portia Faces Life
day-time radio soap for mums, we rode via our big brown box
filled with glowing valves to the Never Never
on a long wide road, a road which never ends
our white fella’s musical theme in those days
for the Aussie Outback never never seen by us

it was decades too soon to Google
classical references in The Argonauts’ Club
but by the time I was five, The World was being televised
we stood outside the window of our electrical shop
Superman fighting for freedom, justice and the American way
well before Donald Trump began doing the same

we’d travel to the Dairy on Darling Road for “milk shakes on a stick”
begged footy cards from the Ampol man
our Christmas baubles made from red, blue and silver milk bottle tops
posters along the railway line advertised Dickies Towels
promoted Wrestling at the Stadium—Big Chief Little Wolf
versus “Dirty” Dick Raines and mysterious graffito
appeared on the grimy walls of the viaduct—
Do not forget Hungary! Foo was here

being serious is meant to emerge sometime
in one’s teens, what then, do I still need to do
to become the person, I am?

Ross Jackson