At 18 I was gauche, looking for a destination
Not a tram ride to St Kilda.
My father and I, both innocents abroad,
Woke after our first night overseas
To a different light, an out-of-sync perspective
And hopefully, heartbreakingly,
The beginnings of wisdom.
Years on I remember most the air–
Aromas from the city at dawn. Thin elusive wisps
Stay with me, lingering exotically
Until in some suburban street
Passing, say, a local takeaway they rekindle
And fill my mind with heat and markets,
The sweaty crush of foreign bodies
And sweet desire for saffron-scented skin.
I rarely travel these days. Back home and cloistered,
My father long dead,
I look at faces in Polaroids and hope those few
Who planned their own escape
Survived the journey. Too late for me.
Tonight I eat my fragrant Vindaloo
And mourn my lost love, a young boy
I glimpsed once in a crowd in Karachi,
And never forgot.
Cathy McCallum
3 comments:
'Viewfinder' demonstrates beautifully the power of poetry to fit the maximum feeling and meaning into the minimum spae. Its 24 lines evoke with sensual imagery distant lands in distant times, past hopes now transmuted into present yearnings. The story, in fact, of all our lives.
Bill Guy, 7.05.09
The way each stanza tells its own unique story within the overall narrative is, I think, an excellent example of poetic construction.
This poem also allows me to be there too, rekindling in my own mind the travels undertaken years in the past and quite suddnely brought back to the fore when reading Viewfinder; such an apt title.
Cathy, you have an uncanny knack: no, not a knack and not uncanny - you have the creative ability to say it all so succinctly and indeed isn't that what poetry is about?.
I RETURNED TO THIS POEM AND REALISE IT HAS SOMETHING THAT TRANSENDS YOU TO A PLACE BEYOND WORDS,EVEN THOUGH WORDS TAKE YOU THERE.LIKE SYMBIOSIS IT IS AN OUTSTANDING PIECE OF WORK AND REQUIRES PUBLISHING.
Post a Comment