THIS JOURNEY

                                     Poem beginning with a line by Pattiann Rogers

          This Arctic blue air that breaks and seizes with zero.

          This sense of time and age grabbing us

          And shaking like a rabbit caught in a spotlight

          Do you remember when 32 degrees

          Was the freezing point of water?

          Those farenheight days

          When life was a book of summers?

          The first page: Magnetic Island

          All light overexposed

          The sea invisible blue and the boats hanging in air

          Over the sandy bottom of Salvador Dali 

          Judy Davis coming out of water laughing

          Her goggles on and little Australian rivers

          Down her face. Sandcastles on the beach at 2am

          All of us 17, school out, possums in the roof

          Feeding them bananas and the strong pungency of new sex.

          Now all our old lovers are like soft toys, dusty

          And lost in a cupboard somewhere in a weatherboard house

          Just glimpsed from the road as we go by

          With the air conditioning on

          A CD ending. Seven hours to Sydney,

          Boredom setting in

          Wondering whether they’ll remember our birthdays.

          The poem is of an age where it needs a nap after lunch.

          It snuggles up in the back seat like a petulant child

          Asking death at regular intervals

          "Are we there yet?"

                                                                                                   Lyndon Walker

                                                                                                      Warrandyte

                                                                                          Sunday, January 25, 2004

                                                                                                        4:02 PM