Green
It began with marigolds
that never showed
alongside the bungalow
when I was twelve
I learned you could tend
and tend without
recompense
—
you either
had it or not.
Perhaps
it was earlier —
those broad beans we all
cajoled on damp cotton-
wool in primary school,
soil-less, dislocated
as an idea without
context, one blunt end
marked with a sly smile
or was it a lid? the blind eye
of a coconut where
they told us the milk
came out, though it looked shut
like the secret aperture
our baby sister
must have come by
that I tried to picture
somewhere near
the upper thigh
thinking it must seal over
when out of use.
I was clueless
as the broad beans, isolate,
generic, never given
a real chance
feeding no one.
Each lonely monad
aligned on the sill
worshipped in term-time
as if that would boost them,
then on the holidays
forgotten and gone
to mould.
Tracy Ryan
Frankston
Library decided it had too much poetry on the shelves, so it dumped a
swag of it onto the sales table amongst the other rejects. 50 cents a
pop or a bag for 5 bucks.
So
I was trotters in the trough, elbows out, fending off the other
foragers — until I twigged that no one else was after what I was
after. So I calmed down and just scooped up the lot.
(Except
the self-published book of bush poetry by an old contender, because,
after all, one must draw the line somewhere.)
I
came home with Kelen (S.K. and Chris), Salom, Hewett. I came home
with Watson, Caesar, Komninos, Croggon and Maiden. And Yasbincek, Lenore, Kerdijk
Nicholson, Tsaloumas, Wynne, Goodfellow, Skovron — and Ryan.
What
a handsome book Hothouse
(Fremantle
Arts Centre Press 2002) is. And what a pleasure to catch up with it
after all these years. I don't know how I missed it back in the day.
I do remember hearing of it, I think it won a prize, but somehow or
other, you know how it goes.
And
as to the experience of reading the book, well — 'Hothouse
comes
off as a precise and lucid aggregation of effects. Without wasting a
word, with quiet authority and integrity, the poet makes it plain.'
PS
The cheeky things at Frankston Library were throwing out my play The
Big Picture so
I put that in my bag for 5 bucks and took it home.
PPS
On my next visit I fell upon Weeping
For Lost Babylon
by Beach which somehow I had missed. I don't know how I missed it.
But I had.
