That Place
That place, fond and grey,
So quick to come to mind;
How I see you for your fragrant Morton fig!
And the grassy knoll and ancient mortar
And painted lines on faded paths
Your memory a loose-thread patchwork
Woven within the stories of my soul
There, mind and matter were merry
That a ball became a barter of friends
And a dream ballooned to fruition;
For just a moment spared to its quiet ageing
As the world just learned how to grow,
You also become a chariot of changes
Wild and juvenile and forever free
That place, fond and grey,
It grew through me and about me,
Flourishing in the colour of my identity
It counselled me without counsel
Learned beside me while I learned,
Infinite was the journey of its wisdom
And in my present glory
So shaken and wan by care,
My eyes are hazy to its grandeur
And blind to its old appeal,
The hull of the arc bursts into recrudesence
And drops its anchor to the riverbed:
Grown, grown are the older crew!
Steering the ships of their eternity
Cast, cast into the river tide
Perhaps one day to return in grace
With the treasures of a conquest greater.
This poem touched me, not only because it evoked remembrance of school – of that whole time – but also because it is a testament to your own growth, and to how have you have put things in perspective – used them as the creative soil from which you may draw inspiration and self-hood.
It is also a great poem – I particularly like your use of imagery; its surrealism and malleability, and I also like the sagely authorial voice.
It reminds me somewhat of the poetry of Judith Wright – ‘South of My Days Circle’.