Second Thoughts by B.N. Oakman

Author:B.N. Oakman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: poetry;Australian poets;Regional Victorian poets;contemporary poetry;poetry and visual art
Publisher: IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd)
Published: 2014-08-20T00:00:00+00:00

Secret Heart

I cannot truly claim

to be blocked; there are endings,

titles, beginnings, mostly false,

but also cul-de-sacs

and always there’s ordure

seeping through every line

and break

until the whole is infected.

The muse surrenders

sometimes, and only, to patience,

so I wait, pencil sharpened,

pad at hand, Hemingway’s

detector on stand-by, attending

moving pictures

of dreams, heeding

silent soundtracks of the heart.

April 25, Bendigo

In the shivering hush between bugle calls the dead

outnumber us – apparitions risen at the ebb of night,

faces smooth as those staring from silver-gelatin

photographs, imagined from crumbling letters,

oft-told stories, summoned by a hand’s caress;

not always done-up in uniform, so many swamped

by history’s scarlet waves, not always loved or good

or brave or noble, no more than we who muster

on barricaded roads near stones mortared against

forgetting to wait for a bugle to rally the sun.

And with its long parting note they fade; they

have no need of us, never older, neither wearied

nor condemned, and every year at bitter mornings

at the heart of an old gold town – we remember them.

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