Fleeing

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A friend of mine showed me a poem she wrote. She used the image of the oars in the water, churning the water to foam. Which reminded me of the end of book nine of the Odyssey. Our hero is fleeing after having blinded Polyphemus. The phrase Homer uses is πολιὴν ἅλα polien hala. Literally the grizzled salt, but obviously Homer is talking about the churning sea water. Odyssey 9.556ff

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So then all the day, until the sun sank
We feasted, sharing ample flesh, sweet wine.
When the sun set and the shadows came,
Lulled by the breakers, we slept on the beach.

With the early rosy fingered light of dawn,
I roused my drowsy comrades, ordered them
To board the ship, to let slip the anchor.

And they at once boarded and on their benches sat
Crouching rows, the grizzled salt sea they struck with oars.

So we sailed away, grieving in our hearts,
Glad to have escaped death, our dear friends dead.

Port Melbourne - Bass Straight

Crossing the Bass Straight in a big old boat. Closing in on our goal.

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I knew we were meant to be together
For we, know what I mean, hate the same things.
Timidity of the capitalist class
Fearful any changes to the flow of cash
And yet rushing salivating to follow
The path finders pushing to over
Produce then equalising back to fear.

What is rational for the individual
Becomes irrational for everyone.

As the down steady rain pelts the earth
Bogging the grassy dirt and sliding off streets
Of hand made bitumen tiny rivulets
Form and all find their way to the rivers
And creeks and streaming brooks embracing filling
The ways of water and constant the water
Rises and over flows the normalising
Banks the constraining banks the confining banks
Slowly at first cautiously searching for low
Spaces to explore and exploit until
With an unstoppable rush the water
Overflows and scours the riverbanks
Filling all depressed places eroding
The sides destroying humbling all
In the path sapping houses and neighbourhoods
Entire towns tossed apart and denuded.
Even so does the capitalist class
Rush into the low places where money
Can be found where gain is to be made
Regardless without thought irrational.

Pretence of inner city living
Gazebo in memoriam ANZAC
Bronze brick subscription great war diggers
Home to homeless barefoot avoided
Encrusted black single feather headband
Failures of our rulers. Discarded
Cast aside abused ignored soldiers
The incurable widows orphans tossed
Onto the pigsty scrap heap the shadow
Of fabulous wealth of endless theft.

After two hours or more crossing
The calm wide light encircled bay
Dreaming of maybe ancient encampments
Forty thousand years ago and the Yarra
Slowly meandered a flat dry plain
Hunters and small gorups built and spoke their tales
After the ice age after the ice melted
The sea rushed into the rip filling shallow
The land hiding the encampmetns the middens
And the meltiung ice caps the rising seas
Recalls Utnapishtim or Noah's flood
The strong waves of the ocean bob cork
Towering ship large apartment building.

Black sky black ocean cloudy starless moon kiss
Pitching and yawing yawing and pitching
Slow and anaemic steady breathing rolling
In unison sympathy with the gentle
Sleep rhythm breathing of children snoring
The slow tidal rhythm of countless lunar
Cycles the long sonorous song calls
Hiding massive southern right humpback whale.
Dread the fear that any time I would be pitched
Off tall second floor scuppered bunk bed.

Hiding in plain site thick working class beard
Searching out quiet herbal smoking dream.
Saints win clinking glasses and television
Sing soggy scraping knifes and forks on plates
Slave coast titans claw back a surprising
Come from behind win o'er the southern storms.

The black dog alone in rowed kennels
A middle aged dyed blonde women sings
Popular disinterred love silly songs.

Shuddering ship
Vibrating engines
Resonance
Shuttering ship
Radiant children
Dissonance.

Watching the Sea Lions

So an old friend mentioned she had been to northern california and it was cold sweatshirt weather, but she got to watch a seal play. and we have seals in australia. around the southern seas between NSW & tasmania and victoria. and i thought of them and then how telemachus fought proteus (the great bull seal at the centre of the harem). and the how seals and whales and gold connect california (1849) to australia (1851) and the theft of the land and the sea. and hands in mackerel snapping trouser pockets kerouac from mill town new england. and before long the whole damn thing had written itself. enjoy or not at your leisure & pleasure.

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Happy water slapping surface bounding seals.
Slap happy sea lions ever changing.
Children of Proteus, held ever dear tight,
Gripped Telemachus, lost daddy lover.

The old man of the sea hugged round his children,
Seal furred grasp Telemachus grappled Knowledge
Of his long lost far away sea spirit
Loving father. Happy seals, sea splashing.
Wave all king philip mornington port bay
Road of rolling feud and bloody fight and theft
That fills the caskets of the wealthy few,
That false the bottom dark heart of them all
Successful families. And so sleek coated
Sea lions humboldt it far far away.
Far from doomed sorrento to desolation
Spear, crazed buckleys gold alone convict cave.
Big angel surge of dulouz and gerard. 
    Poor sad ti jean hands in pockets wishing 
    To be long time gone and asway in heaven...

But we dont get that - 
Dont get nuting even close
Just a spit of water
Coilt from california
To tasmania.
Maybe
Even 
Eden.