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A Blue Mountains Coin in the Slot
Telescope Poem

Discovering Govett’s Leap
is like discovering the back beaches
of Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay.
I pick my way, heart in mouth, along the paths,
and a butterfly from a weeties packet
keeps me company.

You think you’ve seen it all,
but there’s always so much still to see.
It’s Christmas day, but who’s counting?

My father says, ‘Couldn’t you find yourself
a partner for Christmas?’
like it’s a dance or something.

His youngest daughter,
a wallflower, an old maid at 33.
‘Better drive me to the church, Dad,’
I say at my brother’s second wedding,
‘It’ll be the only chance you get.’
They don’t understand the joke.
They’re still hoping.

On grand final day Michael makes me
ring my father because Hawthorn wins.

‘Did they cry in your day, Dad?’ I ask.
‘Well, yeah. Some of the blokes would cry,
if they thought they’d played a bad game,
or if the coach had gone off at them.’
He sounds misty-eyed just thinking about it.
This was not what I was expecting.
(I take out my pen and make some notes.)

In the pub I watch the little boy
standing beside his father,
a loud mouthed Eagles supporter,
following every move out the corner of his eyes
while he pretends to watch the tv.
‘Car’n the Eagles!’ says the father.
‘CAR’N THE EAGLES!’ says the son, jumping madly.

I feel sorry for him as the Eagles gradually lose
and his father sinks more and more
into abusive drunken depression.
(How do you mimic that when you’re ten years old?)
But I feel more sorry for my father.
What happened?

Out of six kids you’d think even one of us might’ve
spent part of our childhood standing by his chair like that,
watching, hoping.
But none of us did, ever.
We went to church. We barracked for Collingwood.

I watch the little girl wander about the lounge,
pretending to put coins
into an invisible cigarette machine
and bound back triumphant. But it’s all fantasy.
She sidles quietly up to her father and he
puts his arm around her absently.
She picks something delicately off his ear lobe,
hesitates just a second, then puts it in her mouth.
‘Your mother wears gym boots!’ yells her father,
cupping his hand to his mouth like he’s at the game.

The six people in the room ignore him.
There is a ripple of excitement amongst the
(hitherto silent) Hawthorn supporters as the Hawks
begin to take control and the Eagles start to die.

This is a backwards poem,
an unreliable/selective-memory poem.

But aren’t they all? (Your poem vs my poem..)

In the car going to the game I say to Colin,
‘Am I aggressive?’

Michael’s already at the pub,
because he fell asleep in the garden
and woke up cranky
(how was I to know? Most normal people
sleep with their
eyes closed.)

Colin says, ‘Well.’
He pauses. I wait.
‘Not .. re-ally!’

He draws the word out long and apologetically.
Oh god! Even Colin thinks I’m aggressive!
‘For a woman, perhaps,’ he says quickly.
‘You’re more aggressive than any other woman I know.’

I sink meekly into my driving seat. Crestfallen.
(Except that females aren’t supposed to have crests.)

‘It’s only men who ever complain about it,’ I say.
(I think I say it quietly, my little wren voice,
but if Michael were here we’d probably argue about this.)

‘Exactly!’ says Colin, and I feel a bit better.
After all, wrens don’t hurt anybody, do they!
(Only worms.)

I let myself get tipsy on two middies in the pub and
forget about driving and forget to keep pulling my skirt down
over my stocking tops. Who cares? All the men here
are married anyway. One of them (although not legally)
to my best friend. Seen all that before.

Michael says, ‘You’re a feminist,
but your sense of humour saves you.’
(Sigh.)
I introduce him to strangers:
‘Michael’s terribly conservative, but
his sense of humour saves him’
and watch his eyes widen in shock and outrage.

I ring my Dad from a phone box
while Michael waits in the car,
his soft white jumper a beacon in the dark.
We take the cliff path home
and as I drive round the bends
he refuses to wear a seat belt and
leans in over me as we try to work out
where we are.

There is a culture clash
here and I’m caught in the midst of it.

Sometimes I am convinced that if I could
just get a powerful enough telescope
I could look back
to see where it all started.

But someone knees me in the back
and I fall on my face in the mud.
I look around
and all I can see are my father and my brothers
and Michael and they’re all on the same team,
and I’m losing; and it’s not even half time…

So I pull my skirt down as I salvage my dignity
and (ever so gently) walk off the field.

*

[From The Party of Life.
First published in Southerly, Winter 1995.]

*