Tuesday Poem: "The Shamans of Mandurah - Part One: The Wanderer"

Towering over the townsfolk, yet unnoticed,

The Wanderer ambles through the streets of Mandurah.

His white shirt and black pants

are well-worn but clean.

Close-cropped silver hair frames his gentle face.

Like a bear forgotten by a travelling circus,

he can be seen rambling to

Furnissdale or Halls Head or Silver Sands.

As he pauses to quench his vision,

God’s butler offers him the silver-plated estuary,

the piece de resistance sprinkled with pelicans.

Looking at the old bridge,

he sees the fisherfolk jostling for casting space.

He wanders on alone,

past the real estate offices

where homogenised photos of faceless suburbs

shout out their dreams

in the form of women’s names

or advertising executives’ utopian fantasies.

As The Wanderer passes,

Mr White-Kneesocks-Safari-Suit shakes his head,

knowing he cannot sell him a mortgaged prison.

NOTE: In a previous incarnation, I drove taxis in a smallish town (with ambitions to be a city) called Mandurah which was about 72km south of Perth. For Kiwis, try to imagine Mount Manganui in the 1960s/1970s and you would get the picture of what it was like when I lived in Mandurah. As a taxi driver, I had plenty of time for observation (fuel for the writer's imagination) and I noticed that there were a number of eccentric personalities/characters that lived in Mandurah. I had the feeling that these characters I dubbed "shamans" were not appreciated in Mandurah. I think that the town fathers and others of their ilk who liked to project an image of Mandurah as a modern, clean, tidy, family-friendly tourist destination saw the "shamans" as blots on the shiny, shiny vista they envisaged. I'm sure if they could have had them re-located somewhere out of sight, they would have. Personally, I love social "outliers". They make life interesting.

Tuesday Poem: "Song of the Self-Exile"

What conflicts would you have me reconcile?

I’ll harmonise your bittersweet refrain.

Let’s sing the wistful song of self-exile

and gaze into the mirror of our pain.

For forty years, Moses, you have wandered

to wind up here complaining of the sand.

But how many chances have you squandered

to build your own, not find your promised land?

Do you look to this landscape for succour

and lament its lack of comforting green?

Where’s Aoraki to make the sky pucker?

Where are the kauri cathedrals serene?

I know the lakes of glass that keenly call,

but could there lurk beneath a taniwha?

One silver thread is missing from the pall,

not feeling white but feeling Pakeha. 

The hooks of blood are tearing at our flesh.

As one we clamour, stammer and revile.

But pay the price of love and look afresh,

though dry and red, these ancient charms beguile.

A longing in the shadow of your smile,

remembering the lover you first kissed.

Let’s sing the wistful song of self-exile

as Aotearoa calls through the mist.

While living in Perth, I met a fellow Kiwi called Alison Moses (too great a surname not to use symbolically) who had a great deal of ambivalence about her adopted homeland despite having lived there for several years. I wrote this for her and as a reflection of my own ambivalence. The call of home, family ties and one's own culture can be very strong.