Join our Cafe Poet Diana Bell Brooks and special guest Deb Westbury when they read their works at Cafe Latte on Thursday 7 April from 5.30pm. Cost is $5 payable on the night and includes a glass of champagne and snacks. Please RSVP to Orange City Library on 6393 8132 or Cafe Latte on 6363 1855. This is the finale event for our Cafe Poet program supported by Australian Poetry, Cafe Latte and the Central West Writers' Centre.
And here is a poem inspired by memories:
The Flood
(l)
The creek beyond the Molong railway track
rises in rivulets I can't contain.
My father's ghost floats by the platform,
in his old white armchair.
There are people from the town's long past
leisurely seeking pleasure
in the creek that's now swollen,
taking their ankle boots off
and wading.
When my parents travelled to Australia,
they knew they were going to settle:
I didn't.
I'm packing cases of books
and wound my arm
on the rough metal staple
of a tea chest
and I'm supposed to be ironing a
handkerchief
of thin white cotton, for the journey
across the ridge to Orange.
(ll)
Now I'm going somewhere
even more uncharted,
where the light glances off the sea
in a curtain of coloured streamers
from the fingers of my loved people
holding the other end.
Where I can hardly part
the way of the crowd
leaning from the handrail of the ship.
People swarm past me
scooping me up with them
and draw me
into the lacquered bosom of the lounge and
stairwell
where the light-roof is.
All the stairs of the ship
centre round us,
and we encounter
the feel of an ark.
I feel the old railway building rising,
golden
on the breast of the flood.
(lll)
I pack up my papers
in the old ticket room of the station
where I've been writing
Down the pine-needled track
I walk for the last time
Kangaroos peep shyly from the shadow.
Bunches of lavender
are piled on a cottage veranda
and the flies lash
old, rich pasture.
By Diana Bell Brooks
Cafe Latte, Austrlian Poetry Cafe Poet Program, March 2011