Sunday, in-queue– what if my national identity sells out? Flags flapping, helpers and hi-five, (take a look at the absolute resilience of this volunteer!)

We had a happy b-day in-queue, where as they waited, the whole of Copland St joined in to sing, Happy Birthday! I gave him a birthday present of a poem that could move with them. If not move them.

Lovely to actually be asked by someone next in line to please share another.

NEXT (STORY) TELLER PLEASE

And to actually share

THE REASON YOU RUCK

“it disappears this muscle clutch 

in a grinding muffled roar

an elastic snap second

a blink-less swallow…

your rising determination

thrusts me back

till I’m swinging

nestled in your hooked elbow

egg-cold and tightly stitched

brushing your heaving chest

till I’m spinning

seed-giddy, through a held breath

hurtling between seven intentions

knocking teeth loose in a tackle

at a rugby sevens line up.

Where do you think they are from? Stewart asks, of those wearing a green and gold t-shirt, boasting AUSSIE, carrying an inflatable kangaroo & clutching a curling colonial flag. Maybe there is something in a stereotype because we bonded rather quickly, and I shared the poem about the sea and Sydney-

“the bridge yawns gracefully above

houselights huddle on a stolen headland

camped conversations silenced by distance

and the inky black spill of still ocean

the water is a kiss or a slap 

against the city’s concrete rim–

I can’t decide”

We cut quickly to political agitation. The Brits were the first boat people to land on Australia, ah, “she knows our history” one of them chimed in. Lets not in Britain suffer from the same amnesia that Australia does when it comes to what actually happened to get us where we are today. Empire was, and did, and settlement wasn’t really so much that as invasion, and where I come from I’m not considered Indigenous and the first people were not the first to suffer a near genocide, and there is today a Commonwealth of nations in which there is rarely (each of us) a common wealth.

Wow, what a day! Despite the slight dribble of rain, the wind blowing my poncho into a portable ‘poet’ bubble, and the tube station hold ups, (long lovely queues) – there were smiles and spectator glee.