IAN C SMITH

Ian C Smith lives near the Gippsland Lakes region in south-eastern Australia with his wife and their four young sons. He has published two books of verse, These Fugitive Days, and, This Is Serious, both by The Ginninderra Press. He donated the ms of This Is Serious to The Bridge Foundation, which is a small community organisation working to support prisoners on release, and to provide community education about prisons.

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MUM'S HOME

They besiege her, home again
laden with shopping, briefcase &
kiddie bric-a-brac left in the car.
She covers the kitchen floor with goods

& tries to give each of them the
precious attention they need. Despite
this clutter & babble, everybody
talking at once, he is reminded

of stillness, a painting by a
Dutch master in its every detail,
a family, a room frozen for all
time within the frame of memory,

those random pinpricks of light, glimpses
that shine from this present the instant
it slides into the vast sheet of
darkness they each trail behind them.

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COOK IN A COLD CLIMATE

Picture his ship in Antarctic seas
sailing through the shadow that is night,
its wooden structure lit by lanterns,
icicles glimmering golden & the cold
the cold stabbing sailors to the bone,
ice cracking beneath a shooting star.
Now there is no turning back.

One major collision with a ghostly shape
& they're all dead in minutes.
No flares, no life preservers
no radio to pick up a mayday call.
Not even a winner's cheque or tabloid story.
Those voyagers pass this night in history
seen & heard by no-one but each other
on the way to their own slow oblivion,
charting the eternal ocean bravely
singing chanteys to an old concertina,
husky notes sighing towards the stars
as the Earth continues to turn,
that silent whirring in the cold, pure dark.

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PATRICK PAINTS A PICTURE

Red lilac & gold, our son
reflects his mother's lovely face &
so important is this

study of devotion he
caresses each detail in
complete concentration &

I criticise his grey attitude
towards all responsibilities
except his island of art

I, who can't even attract
his mother & don't understand
a computer's psyche

don't know what love is
love, abstract facts of hope & grief
blurred, with no clear outline

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REFUGEE

The patrolman, this middle-aged migrant,
wonders what has become of his dreams.
In the hot days he wakes, worry like a bruise.
Now his torchlight shakes, earlier arrivals,
midnight rats, whisper across shined shoes.

This stretched summer, his memory of sad songs,
he considers his wife's epic regret,
his son's sneers, her recital of wrongs
while his new car's curved flanks dazzle
like any parked status symbol's should.

The son sings of kookaburras in gum trees,
collects footy heroes, baulks
bewilderment in a hybrid accent
mocking seniority, talks
of failure to grasp the rules of new games.

Then, out of shadows one fatigued night,
a neat circle head-centre in frosted glass.
Police find no shell near the warehouse
but our patrolman quits while he can,
gives his son a gun story, leaves out the fright.

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IN THE LEFT CORNER

Blows to the heart, the decision
goes against him once more.
A polite letter from

a poetry editor
half his age, his wife works in
a prison, sighs, knows the ropes

that support him, forever
helpless, hands & brain jabbing
instinctively. Today he

saw Anthony Mundine on
a talk show. Truth is, this boxer
is as inarticulate

as him, wanting to be Champ,
believing in the false promise
that shed blood is thicker than wit.