Title: Sport 22: Autumn 1999

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, March 1999

Part of: Sport

Conditions of use

Share:

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Sport 22: Autumn 1999

Kate Camp

Kate Camp

page 30

Unfinished love theorem

Like light
it can travel in waves
or lines
depending on the circumstances.

When I first noticed it, it was travelling in waves
and I could just see its sail pop hopefully up
on the horizon now and then
as it was keeling, or gibing,
or doing whatever brave ocean craft do
when the water is a little lumpy.

I admired its buoyancy, its neat fittings,
the way everything a person could need
was stowed in its purpose-built compartments.
I liked the way it was rigged, and aligned
with particular stars and magnetisms.

Now I'm in amongst it, I find it is travelling in lines,
the underground veins of a railway, hidden,
signposted, never drawn to scale on maps.
It is moving all sorts of things about,
taking good folk to their work, taking them out
and home to their rumpled bedrooms.

I admire its secret progress, how it can speed
or lull you on its beating window,
how it spills you out up silver
stairs and it's unexpected sun, or night lights
shining, seeming so bright, so very surprising.

page 31

A bit off the map

I live viewing the viewers not the view.
Other house-faces take the sea slap
I insinuate in private dunes.

And though he does not live
in that particular grinning street
of lights, that one or the next

I picture him, in the down halo
of a lightbulb, reading
back and forth on the horizon.

He acquires a nautical standing
his house a prow, his spying-glass eye,
aspects of him tellingly wooden.

Lulled by the roll of buses,
the expansive roars of whisper jets,
the one-by-one lights flicked off to bed

I am a refugee of logic
on that subject, insisting on
unlikely land with every step.

page 32

Arabella's very good story

Once in the car mum and
me and Ollie said
as we drove over
the Harbour
Bridge that the
Harbour Bridge should
have a party But
suddenly mum said
The Harbour Bridge
loves the Anzac Bridge
Although it cannot
wink or speak they no
that they love each
other very much.