Poetry
 
 
 

Helen Hagemann's Poetry & Prose

Driftwood

As veils in waterfronts, driftwood floods the tide,
becomes coastal kindling.
Do we really know driftwood? Are they the bones
of old sailors, wooden ships, cargo floating on shore?
Village homes wrecked in tsunamis & storms?
Perhaps, an old man once bobbed on a lake,
until the worms & bacteria petrified him prone
for Bald Eagle to posture on, clean his claw.
Prometheus, wracked on mountain top,
watched as his totemic dream swirled below;
the sea sharing its splinters. Should we think
of Norse mythology, we might consider
Embla & Ask, who drifting on the tide,
became human voices from elm & ash.
How we love this tincture of wood, a decorative,
aquatic art destined for mantle, piano-top,
its sea worthiness. We have bookends,
facing Feng Shui's north & south,
the ying & yang of authors' books.
At night sideboard lamps luminesce over sculptured figurines, lathed by the sea.
A piece of driftwood becomes a goldfish’s
windowed aperture, where even our eyes,
refracted in aquarium lights,
swim towards each other.

Ghost Train 

 

There is something in voodoo sounds
that causes a ghost train to jettison
passengers to new angles of darkness.
 

The distraction at hand is a draughty chamber,
a feather tickle on one's neck, brutal laughter
that has you thinking the devil is having a joyous day.
Thunder & lightning rattle doors, although
it's too entombed to see the tempest within.
Something is primal in this Ghost House,
more Draculaean than booing white sheets.
There are chains rattling, anguished cries,
occupants at the finishline scorched by a salty wind–
all a pretex to scare the marrow from your bones.
 

We miss an overriding megaphone, a neon sign,
& the static of their message in the ticklish air.
This world seems harmless enough, as the train
sucks us through creaking wooden doors –
darkness punctured like a firefly on a midnight lake.
Cazam! & this dolly-clanking world turns bright.
We're outside, jostling the lip of the world, grinding
precariously along the pier's wooden ledge;
harbour as close as briny sea-mist.
 

Here you really know you're in the dark
thinking about other naive times in your life.
The ghost train shuffles forward like retirement.
Around you passengers shriek, sensing barnacles below.
We dangle in space like an engineering experiment,
ready to rise up, tilt level, or be flung into the mouth of
a hungry Grey Nurse (as the legend outside proclaims!).
 

In the silence of gears, we fear for loved ones, our
life! Until a jolt, then another, & we are shunted forward,
unharmed like saved swimmers. Inside, an exponential naught,
a further vast unknown. Yet, it is here that we laugh
at their tricks, a carnival-railway ingenuity.
 

Still buckled in our seat, velocity suspended for two seconds,
cardigans close, head-flopping at line's end–
cars bearing down their weight on our quivering frame.
 

Leaving the ghost train is no miracle at all,
people around you trumpet their close proximity to death.
You have to admit, you've had your two cents' worth,
and wonder about the mechanics of it all,
as you buy three more tickets,
wiser now for having gone before.

 


 Read Other Poems from my new collection"Evangelyne & Other Poems"

How to contact me-
Phone on (08) 9343 0072
or Email: Helen Hagemann 

or write for information to PO Box 331, WANNEROO, Western Australia 6946

Copyright 2005-2008 © Unless for the purpose of study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without the written permission of the author.

       
 
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