The Crossing Place

[Stephen Whiteside]

Good.

[r.magnay]

I know what you are saying Heather, earlier this year I went to Adelaide with my Dad to buy a wheelchair friendly car, we met the young accident victim who owned the car, a pretty young girl, she is about twenty two now and has been bed ridden since her accident when she was about eighteen, crippled from the shoulders down, I have been trying to write a poem about it or her, the words are easy enough to find, but it is hard to find a pattern that doesn't make the poem sound like a cattle muster rather than a poem dedicated to a young paralysed girl!

[Stephen Whiteside]

Why don't you give us the cattle muster and we'll see if we can knock it into shape - or into an even worse one, perhaps?

[Stephen Whiteside]

Ross, why don't you try re-writing it as a waltz? Rhyming triplets, maybe.

[Heather]

It will come to you one day Ross. One day you will hear it and you will know it is right.

Heather

[Stephen Whiteside]

No, Heather! Stop being so sweet and gentle! He should offer it up to the bush poets as a sacrifice so they can sink their ugly yellow fangs into it!

[Vic Jefferies]

Absolutely no criticism intended Heather. You asked for comments and I immediately put your poem together with your post re Leon Gellert and came up with Anzac Cove. You have written a fine poem and I couldn't agree more that we need to get away from abab rhyme and mechanical metre. I wont name the poet but recently read a book of poetry written by someone I have always regarded as one of our best contemporary bush poets only to discover that the entire book consists of abab rhymes,
equal line lengths and virtually the same metre in every poem. Individually this person's poems are great but a whole book of them almost put me to sleep. Add to that the endless nostalgia for galloping horses, creaking saddles and bushland settings and I felt like I never wanted to see another sun set anywhere near a gum (wattle, iron bark or she oak) tree.

[Dave Smith]

I really like that Heather, and Maureen not unfinished but left with a bit of mystery. Haunting.

Dave.

[Heather]

Thanks Dave. Haunting is good... thanks.

Thanks Vic. I know exactly what you mean. Finding Gellert was very refreshing and has reinvigorated my writing..... I can't understand why he isn't better known.

Fangs Stephen? I'm beginning to wonder which circles you move in....

[Stephen Whiteside]

Wonder no more, Heather. All of my friends have big curved teeth and very bad breath!