Trams trundle by.
We are people watching.
Plonked outside the Art Gallery, Caro and I
admire the addition of volcanic rock
to the stream-like water fountain.
The rust-coloured rocks have begun to moss
and the assembled rubble resembles
a Japanese contusion.
We are ensconced on a more than hip-wide, more than hip-high
generous stone edging.
Perfect seating,
if you've long legs.
Also stymies pickpockets - ha!
A school of visibly-vested coppers
Kois past.
The crowds don't mill or pool
they cumulus-nimbus,
clump.
Three bereted boys choo choo past.
Then three girls similarly attired -
navy blue and gold gaitered and epauletted
they 'think I can' along hung with hoisted drums.
Four horses plod up with unPlods atop.
The horses are socked with loyalist colours.
Swan ponies - right flank, Hawks, left-aligned
to correspond to the appropriate side of the barricaded street
devotees have tribal-lined.
'Who's gonna win?' Caro calls out
as two matrons sail past, fully jerry-rigged out.
'You asking us?' one cheerily responds.
Brown and gold abounds,
bumble bee stripes.
Red and white competes,
poppy splashes that recall soiled bandages
- Don't
- Go there.
One young Metro mum kicks footy to bored son.
Good going, he looks a tad ADHD.
A young lass sports a riotous beanie
Rastafari-esque with wool dreds in team colours.
Medusa or Raggedy Ann? Don't matter,
her hat draws envy from the other attendant kiddies.
.
Where are you darling
In this football motley medley?
.
My mind is fractured attempting saturation upload buffering,
so much stimulus
it is kaleidoscope-colliding,
psychedelic Black Hawk-downing
- yikes!
Loud speakers braying-vibrate:
Welcome us to the Toyota AFL grand final something or other.
Striated sound, pound, pound.
Sssslow down -
dapper yuppy gents shoal past, shiny suited, pointy-toed gorgeous
they sup foam from corrugated cups capped
with dribble-free protuberances.
No indigenous presence,
I reflect,
trying to interject
some fresh air into my festering senses.
No welcome to country,
no smoking ceremony,
no didgeridoo brooding and soothing -
this is about as full-on, full-paced, hopped-up, on speed an experience as you're likely to get.
As if I have conjured him up,
a young Aboriginal man offers me his hand to shake.
I do so
as he explains
he will dance or sing for me if I will give him a few coins.
He's picked the right one
I'm a soft touch if ever there was any softness in humanity
but I don't want him to dance,
why should he?
I reach for my purse,
pass over the dosh and tell him
I am giving him cash because he is so handsome.
He fixes me with his first real glance
- am I mocking him?
- I'm not
so he smiles genuinely this time and reshakes my hand
and wanders off.
Still 40 mins till the parade kicks off.
Bands and trams variously float and drift by.
A posy of Vietnamese faces stops, questioning:
'Where is Ka - Seen - Oh?
Caro thinks they are asking about Carlton
and she begins to explain that team
have not made
the Final but I, who have grown up among
the Non-English speaking,
rightly decipher,
deliver a gesticulating mime-answer: Casino, that way.
A man looms
an alarming hawk head erupting from chest
and a less-than-suave tribal tea cosy hat.
A jack-a-napes would not be out of place here today.
So where are the jugglers?
Eel pie sellers, fortune tellers, will there be bear baiting, later on?
My head spinning-wheels,
I am slipping sideways.
That's when
you appear
finally,
in the space beside me,
the one all others have instinctively forsaken.
You take my hand, signal, it's O.K., my love,
I'm here...
and my world
centres
.
and my mind
clears.
YOU ARE READING
Borealis Love
PoetryLove - what does that word mean, what does it comprise? Do we always recognise it when faced with it? Do we value it when we ought to do so? Do we squander it when it is too easily given? Do we ever understand until it has left us and we are left to...
