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Angie Angel : Two poems 
 
 

NATIONAL COLLECTIONS                        

                  for Ewan Maidment

There are suburban rainbows in the kitchen
where the archives of days hold the traces of something collected in an old shop.
A surfboard maybe, stained glass . . .
or maps.
Or the paintings and pantomimes which dance for you
in the way the mountain bike wobbles
up steep bush tracks.
Push further.
The kids call out along the street
where their pet ducks and dogs
call back. "Don't leave us!"
The sky
delineates an anthropologist
with a curator's eye.
"Come back!"
The highways, airports, and the South Pacific
all call back too.
But in Canberra, or Grasshopper Island,
streets, oceans, circle the fruit trees,
the children,
documents gathered for work,
arranged in libraries and warehouses
and all circle this small to moderate house.
Hi bliss! Before our unconventional shopping trips
there were your books, and talk before I fell asleep as guest
and like a lens
the orange Canberra lights shone in
and in the pools of water in the streets
it was like fireflies.
My last thoughts
had something to do with "information"
like the backyard
crammed full of life
and its importance.

COAST (North Head, Moruya, Australia)

It's dawn. The surf upon the long, long beach pounds, sucks in air.
      The broad, broad sands are empty save few sticks
      of figures who look out of Picasso's sketch of Don Quixote.
      Further inland aeroplanes land upon a field.
      Behind a tent flap someone speaks. A story, story.

These estuaries have no clocks. Octopus gardens, the odd crane,
or just the centuries where mutineers and the odd tourist stops.
The town, quite a long way away, is itching to encroach in here.
Files and submissions are opened in the town; about big developments, there's endless talk -
and there are those opposed - the banksias, the kangaroos, the flapping tents, and those small planes that whirr.

Angie Angel works as a freelance journalist in Canberra, Australia, and is presently working towards a book of short stories.

 
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