Emily Dickinson - Lives Like Loaded Guns

My son bought me a Kindle reader some time ago and I freely admit, the battery life on that tablet has never been over-stretched or extended anywhere near melt-down.  I’m sorry, but there’re far too many reasons why I stay back with my beautiful hard print books.  I did think that the Kindle might be useful when travelling – easier to jam into the seat pocket in front, and it does do that.  Yet, here I was on holidays, squeezed into economy, and I’m turning the pages of a thick book, and struggling with where to stuff it when the food trays come around.  Any inconvenience I might have suffered was worth it – this was a great book; a biography of Emily Dickinson written by Lyndall Gordon, Lives Like Loaded Guns, Virago Press.  Anybody studying Dickinson should read it.  I had never studied or read any of Dickinson’s poetry, so this was my introduction to her work.  The first thing you get about Emily Dickinson is full mystery – early American woman poet, died young, a recluse by habit, wrote 2000 poems but only 7 published in her lifetime, wrote her first poems in the winter of 1862, accused of staying in obscurity because of early criticism, not married (disappointed love, jilted? labelled by male critics as a half-cracked little spinster), misrepresented by meddling editors, and so on and so on!  What you get from Lyndall Gordon’s, Lives Like Loaded Guns is I believe, a factual insight into the intrigues of the Dickinson dynasty of the late 1800’s and the family feuds involved in bringing Emily’s poems to publication.  You come to realise how Emily may not have been a recluse by habit, but in fact suffered epileptic fits and therefore had no choice but to hide from the world and reflect privately on life.  Epilepsy in Emily’s time was seen as a shameful condition that brought embarrassment to oneself and one’s family, so never a chance for somebody with epilepsy to live a normal social life.  No question of getting married, no question of extended social contact because one never knew when a fit might come on.  Also, the sufferer’s physical environment had to be controlled because of the affect that light and vision has on triggering fits.  In view of such knowledge, when you read Emily Dickinson you do get a sense of a poet who has looked deeply within herself through personal pain, isolation and affliction.  In fact, reading Dickinson is discovering Emily Dickinson in person, the who that she knows she is.  Most of her poems are reflections about life, nature, death and surety of God and an afterlife cemented in the 1800’s.  Something else about Dickinson is that her work may have remained unpublished if not for family feud and rivalry involving Emily’s sister, Lavinia, their brother Austin, his wife Susan, Austin’s long-time mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd and the off-spring from the Dickinson’s and the Todd’s.  Hey, read the book, Lives Like Loaded Guns.
I’ve selected four Dickinson poems for this post – not because any are among my favourite poems, but because I feel the first two are good examples from Emily’s self-reflection, and the next two give an insight into illness and seizures that may have ruled her life.

(Emily Dickinson 1830 – 1886)

I never saw a moor,

    I never saw the sea;

Yet know I how the heather looks,

And what a wave must be.

 

I never spoke with God,

Nor visited in heaven;

Yet certain am I of the spot

As if the chart were given.

 

(Emily Dickinson 1830 – 1886)

I’m nobody!  Who are you?

Are you nobody too?

Then there’s a pair of us – don’t tell!

They’d banish us, you know.

 

How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!

A lot of Dickinson’s poems were published untitled.  In a lot of them the ‘Dickinson’ voice can be recognised through her favoured use of a 4 foot / 3 foot rhythm.  Both the poems above share with us something of Emily Dickinson – her Christian faith and certitude; her humility, lack of pretension, quaint humour.  The poems read with simple emotion and joy.  Given the volume of such short poems Emily wrote, you could follow her work by reading one poem each day – sort of like those inspirational collections, called perhaps – ‘Day by Day with Dickinson’.  I bet it’s out there already.

The next two Dickinson poems are a little different:

The Lost Thought

 - if ever the lid gets off my head

(Emily Dickinson 1830 - 1886)

 

I felt a cleaving in my mind

   As if my brain had split;

I tried to match it, seam by seam,

   But could not make them fit.

 

The thought behind I strove to join

   Unto the thought before,

But sequence ravelled out of reach

   Like balls upon a floor.

 

 

Ghosts

(Emily Dickinson 1830 – 1886)

 

One need not be a chamber to be haunted,

One need not be a house;

The brain has corridors surpassing

Material place.

 

Far safer, of a midnight meeting

External ghost,

Than an interior confronting

That whiter host.

 

Far safer through an Abbey gallop,

The stones achase,

Than, moonless, one’s own self encounter

In lonesome place.

 

Oneself, behind ourself concealed,

Should startle most;

Assassin, hid in our apartment,

By horror’s least.

 

The prudent carries a revolver,

He bolts the door,

O’erlooking a superior spectre

More near.

 

The collection of Dickinson I’ve got is a Chatham River Press edition, Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson.  The poems in the collection were selected from the first three volumes published of Dickinson poems (3^rd series published 1896).  These volumes were edited by Mabel Loomis Todd.  Remember, Mabel Todd was the mistress of Emily Dickinson’s brother (Austin).  Mabel never met Emily Dickinson face-to-face (weird).  A preface to the book is written by Thomas Higginson (Boston man of letters and publisher).  Higginson rejected four poems that Emily sent to him for possible publication in 1862 (“A Day”; “We Play at Paste”; “Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers”, and “The Nearest Dream Recedes Unrealised”).  Higginson said her style was too ‘spasmodic’.  Higginson may have only seen Emily from a distance, once in his life!  Yet these are the people who first edited Emily’s hand written poems and introduced her to the public after her death.  I’m sure further study of Dickinson publications beyond these first three series will show that early editors made subjective changes to Emily’s original text for what they thought was an improvement in structure and in applying their own interpretation.  An example is in the poem, The Lost Thought.  I believe this is Emily describing what she perceives in her mind when suffering a seizure, how her logical thought is disrupted, “the thought behind I strove to join, unto the thought before”.  This is supported in the original manuscript notes (from Lives Like Loaded Guns), where the poem is titled, If Ever the Lid Gets off My Head, and Emily describes how she feels a ‘cleaving’ in her brain, as if the lid of the brain gets off her head and can’t re-attach.  In the first published version of the poem, the title may lead us to believe it’s about not being able to remember something (Lost Thought).  Also, in the original manuscript the first line reads, ‘I felt a cleaving in my mind’.  In the edited version the line reads, ‘I felt a clearing in my mind’.  A ‘clearing’ (emptying) is definitely less dramatic and painful than a ‘cleaving’ (splitting) in the mind.
I include Ghosts, because it is one of the tracks on Paul Kelly’s album, Conversations With Ghosts – brilliant.

My connection to Emily Dickinson in this post is by way of a couple of poems of mine where I have looked within and attempted to express myself / my soul.  This is a great subject matter for a poet – how I see the world; how I really feel; who I feel I am.  Writing in such a way requires honesty, self-awareness, acceptance and authenticity – conditions that you grow into.  And there can be danger in honestly revealing the inner self; exposing the soft under-belly; putting yourself out there to be judged.

 

1998.  Maybe it is how it is - and our circumstance won’t change until we accept it.

Answers

 

Of all my pleas for intercession,

I’ve heard God answer twice,

Once upon our paper round, wet night,

Flogged tired up Regal Way,

Oh Lord let me do thy will, I pray,

Please grant me something more than this,

………… and God answered,

…… you are doing My will.

 

And once more when I walked the dog

Past mansions on Mainsail,

Wondering, when will I prevail,

Where lies my success, oh why,

Have not I, until I give it up,

Resigned to you Lord Jesus Christ,

………… and God answered,

…… thank you.

                                      J. O. White

2000.  People say you need to be more ‘assertive’.  They say you get over-looked because you’re not assertive.  Well, shit, I’m not the one doing the over-looking, I’m here.  And if people can’t see me because they’re too busy being assertive so they themselves can be seen, then maybe I don’t want to play the game.

 

Shadows

I’ve got to say,

Somewhere deep in my soul,

Life is a dead ache of desire,

For what, I do not know,

And I have to get up each day,

To be superficial at things,

That drift away from binding prayer.

 

When it does lead,

It brings me argument

Defeat at the hands of others

Also aching but stronger

In their determination for me

To be subjugated so they

May live to their potential and I to mine

 

I guess,

Until I see it’s all in your mind,

All in your mind, they say.

                                                J. O. White

W.B. Yeats - Sailing to Byzantium

I like nearly any movie the Coen brothers (Joel and Ethan), have produced or had a hand in – Blood Simple, Fargo, The Big Lebowski (my favourite), O Brother Where Art Thou?  I tell you, if there’s a cult following happening for those guys, then I’m a part of it.  So it’s only natural I sat up and took notice when I’m reading a biography on the English poet, William Butler Yeats, and there it is, the opening line to his most famous poem, Sailing To Byzantium – the line is, ‘That is no country for old men’.  No Country for Old Men!  That would have to be one of my best Coen brothers’ movies.  It’s one of those movies where you can always remember where you were when you first saw it, how old you were, who you were with, what shirt you had on, where you went to afterwards ……….  ‘No Country for Old Men!’  Oh boy, I just had to add ‘Sailing To Byzantium’ to my list of favourite poems.  And that wasn’t easy for me, because the poem is a difficult one to understand.  But a number of things drew me towards this one – first off, I’m always interested in a poet’s life, how he or she lived (or lives), what they believe in, their education, family life, experiences, joys, sufferings ….  That’s why I added a dog-eared, marked up, student copy of a W. B. Yeats biography to my library before ever having read any of his poetry.  It’s sort of like, ‘is it better to read the book first and then see the movie, or see the movie and then read the book?’  For me, coming to Yeats was definitely a case of, read about the poet and then have a look at what he wrote.  Yeats was an Irishman – a pretty smart guy from a good background, but I think throughout his life he got lost in a struggle to find the Truth and enlightenment along pathways of Irish myth, Eastern religions, mysticism, spiritualism, magic and the occult – a true poet, a visionary man and a poet of symbolism.  But Sailing To Byzantium was written when he was sixty years old so he’s starting to make a lot more sense and becoming more open, compared to his earlier work.  The poem’s about getting old – an old man agonising over getting old, ‘fastened to a dying animal ….. ‘, requesting that God take his soul and set it, ‘upon a golden bough …… ‘.  I can relate to the getting old thing here, so the poem appeals to me.  Being a classic poem, there’s much been written about it on the web, so look it up, Sailing To Byzantium, W.B. Yeats …...
 

Sailing To Byzantium

(W. B. Yeats – 1865-1939)

 

That is no country for old men. The young

In one another's arms, birds in the trees

- Those dying generations – at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

 

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Nor is there singing school but studying

Monuments of its own magnificence;

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

To the holy city of Byzantium.

 

O sages standing in God's holy fire

As in the gold mosaic of a wall,

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

And be the singing-masters of my soul.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is; and gather me

Into the artifice of eternity.

 

Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily form from any natural thing,

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

Or set upon a golden bough to sing

To lords and ladies of Byzantium

Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

 

To me, there are two fundamentals that go towards making a great poem – ‘content’ and ‘construction’.  The content in Sailing To Byzantium I find OK because I see it as an expression of age and belief.  But read this poem a few times and see how brilliantly it is constructed.  I know we’re in modern times and it’s all free verse, no constraints – but it’s only a master, no matter from what era, who lays down such a construction to endure all of time.  W. B. Yeats is the master – Sailing To Byzantium; four verses each of eight-lines; the rhythm is iambic pentameter (ten-syllable lines); and the rhyme pattern has two trios of alternating rhyme followed by a couplet (ABABABCC).  That is something to study and aspire to.
 I post my poem, Must Be at My Best, as a link, and I know it ain’t even half-the-way there!  Except the common thread is, like Yeats, I’m arrived at a point where I ponder on growing old.  Bouts of illness warn me that fading vitality, stamina and strength will soon declare the venues and arenas where I once brashly and boldly walked in, now, ‘no country for old men’.

2011.  This was another year sucked quietly from the blood (Kenneth Slessor).  We went to Malaysia for a holiday and then stumble from one disaster to another.  I come down with some fever-chill virus (Chicka Wu Wu virus for the want of a professional term).  I abandon myself to that relaxed realm where I don’t give a care and I feel so old.

Must Be at My Best.

 

In the Priceline chemist

the old bird behind the cash counter

has her eyes follow me in,

she stays with me a tad too long,

either suspicious, or

she fancies me,

I’m fighting off the fever chills,

dressed in my old black corduroys,

a black T-shirt beneath the V

of a black sweat top

that I slept in recently.

I think maybe she’s watching me,

but then I’m sitting in a chair

at the prescription counter, and

she comes out from behind the cash counter

through a swinging door, and

talks to the prescription guys

about going to lunch

and could they man the counter

and all the time, I’m sure

she’s taking peek glances at me

I’m slouched back as much as I can

in the plastic chair

with my corduroy legs stuck straight out

above my brown suede slip-ons.

She disappears out the back to lunch.

The prescription guy takes my money

at the cash counter,

and as I go through the automatic sliding doors

I’m thinking about other missed opportunities.

 

Charles Causley - Timothy Winters

I’ve been wanting to post this well known poem by Charles Causley for some time.  It’s called, Timothy Winters.  I love the poem for a number of technical reasons – the rhyming, a four feet five feet rhythm and a voice that I guess is Cornish (Charles Causley came from Cornwall), so it makes you want to recite it in your best British accent.  Then there’s the entertaining sense of humour and the nice hook at the end, ‘come one angel, come on ten: Timothy Winters, Lord.’

Charles Causley was a schoolteacher, and this poem certainly stands testimony to the belief that if I am to be a poet I should write about things I know or have observed.  Well, OK, about the things I know, as well as what I have considered toward my observations, together with what my emotional response is to them.  I think that’s how I’ve come to select Timothy Winters for this post.  I’m thinking how society treats people wrong sometimes, especially from lack of justice within our social systems.  We all have a built in sense of what is fair and of what makes something wrong – sometimes we need reminding of it.  Here in our news in Sydney we have public outcry from the parents of an innocent young boy who was walking with his girlfriend through the city when he was ‘king hit’ and killed by some thug who went on attacking other victims on the same night.  The thug received a prison sentence of only four years on good behaviour.  I know revenge is not a part of justice, but I feel for the parents – at their faith and trust in the system and how they can’t help feel they’ve been let down.

Let down and duped by the system – the legal system, the political system, the welfare system.  Poor Timothy Winters, needing all the help in the world makes social justice and the school’s prayers of petition look like a joke when he, “roars ‘Amen’!”

Timothy Winters

(Charles Causley – 1917 to 2003)

 

Timothy Winters comes to school

With eyes as wide as a football pool,

Ears like bombs and teeth like splinters:

A blitz of a boy is Timothy Winters.

 

His belly is white, his neck is dark,

And his hair is an exclamation mark.

His clothes are enough to scare a crow

And through his britches the blue winds blow.

 

When teacher talks he won’t hear a word

And shoots down dead the arithmetic-bird,

He licks the pattern off his plate

And he’s not even heard of the Welfare State.

 

Timothy Winters has bloody feet

And he lives in a house on Suez Street,

He sleeps in a sack on the kitchen floor

And they say there aren’t boys like him any more.

 

Old man Winters likes his beer

And his missus ran off with a bombardier,

Grandma sits in the grate with a gin

And Timothy’s dosed with an aspirin.

 

The Welfare Worker lies awake

But the law’s as tricky as a ten-foot snake,

So Timothy Winters drinks his cup

And slowly goes on growing up.

 

At morning prayers the Headmaster helves

For children less fortunate than ourselves,

And the loudest response in the room is when

Timothy Winters roars ‘Amen!’

 

So come one angel, come on ten:

Timothy Winters says ‘Amen’

Amen amen amen amen.

Timothy Winters, Lord.

At first reading, this poem may appear to be a swipe at Christian belief, a mockery of religious process, a suggestion that the Lord is powerless and blind to reality.  But I don’t think that is what the poem says.  If it is a swipe, then it is a swipe at one individual’s (the headmaster) and the system’s (school) blindness to recognize that there is already one among them who is in immediate need.  Yes, Timothy Winters roaring ‘Amen’ is a joke but it is a joke on the system that goes through a ritual of morning prayer yet never thinks that it should bear true witness.

I haven’t read much of Charles Causley.  He was an English poet, born in Cornwall.  He served in the Royal Navy during WWII so he must have been a decent sort of bloke and because of that I’m keen to read more of his work.

 

I wrote my poem for this post some time ago.  It comes from what I observed in the press, my consideration toward that situation and my emotional response to it, which was a sense of injustice and social misunderstanding.  I don’t know, a lot of times I can’t help but feel for the underdog no matter what shit he’s in or what he’s done.  Don’t let the bastards win man!

 

2000:  Listening to the news, I couldn’t help but feel the anguish and hurt of a man in a hopeless situation.

What About the Man

 

A man snatched his son

at Port Norlunga and

took him to a warehouse

in Lonsdale.

 

The man had been living there

since being estranged

from his wife,

it was a custody battle.

 

The man

threatened to set fire

to himself and the boy.

Police said there was a smell of fuel in the area.

 

They had to surround the factory with a SWAT team,

ambulances, fire engines

red hoses run out

police negotiators.

 

They got it all for television

on the six o’clock news,

you could see the news reader thought

the man had done something wrong.

 

She was calm

on the side of right

and was caring

and beautiful.

 

The soft and sweet potential

of a mother’s love

assured us the man gave himself up

and was taken into custody.

 

Everything was OK,

the boy was re-united with his mother,

a happy ending to a nasty situation

thought the lovely news reader

 

And she carefully smiled to assure us

that the woman was good and loved her son

while the man

was led away by two very official policemen.

 

He

will be charged

with abduction

and endangering life.

 

Hey!

what about the man

who snatched his son

at Port Norlunga!
                                   J. O. White
 

Harold Norse - I Am Not A Man

I first heard of Harold Norse when he was mentioned in a biography I read about W. H. Auden.  The biography told how, in 1939 Norse and his then friend/lover, Chester Kallman, went to the first poetry reading that Auden and Isherwood presented in America.  Auden met the pair after the reading and from that meeting Chester Kallman went on to become Auden’s lifetime lover and companion.  Harold Norse went on to become an accomplished poet in his own right – homosexual/gay liberationist; part of the beat generation (Ginsberg, Bukowski); befriended by William Carlos Williams who gave strong endorsement and support for his writing, calling him ‘the best poet of his generation’.  My next encounter with Norse was when I read his book, Memoirs of a Bastard Angel.  From Harold’s account of the meeting with Auden, I get the feeling that Norse believes it was he who Auden really fancied on that fateful reading night, but that his friend Chester went behind his back and ‘cut his grass’, so to speak.  The book is a good read if you’re OK about the homosexual, pre-aids lifestyle scene told with frank honesty.
Despite my introduction to Harold Norse, I have not read a lot of his poetry – not easy to find here in Australia – bits and pieces on-line.  One poem that I like and have been influenced by is ‘I am Not a Man’.  This poem would have presented a much more powerful statement back in the time it was written, and for that it serves as an interesting benchmark against which to measure social change.  When I read this poem now, forty-one years after it was written I am strengthened to believe all barriers, all prejudices, all bigotries, vilifications, persecutions, can disappear as our society evolves (hastened by people like Norse who are willing to stand up and speak out, and who have the ability to eloquently record it for the record).  I Am Not A Man is a challenge for all males who may be blindly caught up in some societal fabricated norm of what it has got to be to be a ‘man’.
 

I Am Not A Man

(Harold Norse, 1916 – 2009)

 

I am not a man. I can’t earn a living, buy new things for my family.

I have acne and a small peter.

 

I am not a man. I don’t like football, boxing and cars.

I like to express my feelings.

I even like to put my arm around my friend’s shoulder.

 

I am not a man. I won’t play the role assigned to me –

the role created by Madison Avenue, Playboy, Hollywood and Oliver Cromwell.

Television does not dictate my behaviour.

 

I am not a man. Once when I shot a squirrel I swore that I would never kill again.

I gave up meat. The sight of blood makes me sick. I like flowers.

 

I am not a man. I went to prison for resisting the draft.

I do not fight when real men beat me up and call me queer. I dislike violence.

 

I am not a man. I have never raped a woman.

I don’t hate blacks. I don’t get emotional when the flag is waved.

I do not think I should love America or leave it. I think I should laugh at it.

 

I am not a man. I have never had the clap.

 

I am not a man. Playboy is not my favourite magazine.

 

I am not a man. I cry when I am unhappy.

 

I am not a man. I do not feel superior to women.

 

I am not a man. I don’t wear a jockstrap.

 

I am not a man. I write poetry.

 

I am not a man. I meditate on peace and love.

 

I am not a man. I don’t want to destroy you.

 

Notice in the last line how Harold stops reflecting on himself, looks up, and addresses his audience.  That gesture is like a hammer blow that triggers a sense of shame – I don’t want to destroy you (so what’s compelling you, that you feel you have to destroy me?)

 

Reading Norse’s I Am Not A Man, made me think of areas of my life where I feel I’m out of step with the accepted norm.  One of those areas happens to be the town I’m living in – there’s a word, ‘parochial’.  Don’t get me wrong, Newcastle offers everything you might tick in a top ten towns to live in survey – open space, great beaches, fishing, boating, sport, on the doorstep of fine wineries, a nice, safe place to bring up the family, etc.  However, not having been born and bred in Newcastle, I see a problem with how the locals believe it’s so damn good that they just want to leave it the way it is; keep it a secret; become inbred.  So I’m thinking of the things I find irritating about the staunch defenders of this town, and I set it down with, ‘I am not Novacastrian’.  Working on my poem, I became aware of something about Harold’s expression compared to my expression.  Harold presents a calm balance between what he is not and what he is.  However, where I found I could easily state what I was not, by attacking the thing that set me apart, I was at a loss to state what I am.  I’m going to have to work on that!

 

2011.  Newcastle in NSW, Australia, is a working class town – former steel-works, coal shipping port, industrial blue collar jobs.  People born here, have their family from here, call themselves ‘Novacastrian’.  I’ve lived in Newcastle for near on twenty years now, but I’m still quick to point out that I don’t come from ‘round here.

 

I am not Novacastrian

 

I’m not Novacastrian,

I’ve never spent a weekend pig shooting

on somebody’s private property

somewhere west of Nyngan or Narrabri, or somewhere.

 

I’m not Novacastrian,

I don’t have a holiday house at Bluey’s Beach

nor do I hitch my caravan to my Toyota land cruiser

each year at Easter,

drag it to the same park, same site

somewhere near Tuncurry

or on the banks of the Clarence River.

 

I’m not Novacastrian,

I don’t own a boat,

go fishing off the drop-over,

Stockton beach, Nobby’s,

or tow my kids around the lake on a rubber do-nut.

 

I’m not Novacastrian,

I don’t know how to build my own home

from plans I drew up myself,

with scraps of building material

pilfered from work, or a mate’s work

or bought second hand at Bunnings.

 

I’m not Novacastrian,

I don’t know any of the Knights players, personally

I think the entertainment centre’s a barn

the art gallery, a barn,

I won’t go to the trots, the show, the workers club,

Mattarra festival,

I don’t get excited over a Saturday night out

in Darby or Beaumont Street,

stagger around drinking, drunk, socially loud

in front of bullet-headed bouncers outside the Brewery

or Finnigans and ego charged youths from up the Valley.

 

I’m not Novacastrian,

I will vote out any political party

that has done nothing in twenty years

to secure funding for projects in their electorate,

that allows a city to stagnate, ripen

with concrete cancer rot,

I don’t point out, with pride

examples of inaction such as

the Great Northern, the Post Office,

the rail line, the Hunter Mall, Honeysuckle.

 

I’m not Novacastrian,

I haven’t worked in the one shed for thirty-five years,

owned the one house, paid for by the time

I was twenty-five.

 

I’m not Novacastrian,

I don’t get jealous

if you happen to have more than I’ve got,

nor do I gloat if you’ve got less than me,

or lose what you’ve already got,

I don’t count knowledge, education,

experience and culture

as things to get jealous over.

 

I’m not Novacastrian,

I don’t use the model car a man drives,

motor bike, chain saw, golf clubs or brand of beer

to classify him as a dick-head,

or someone clever.

 

I’m not Novacastrian,

I don’t ride a push bike I had when I was a kid

in traffic along Stewart Avenue, wearing a crash hat

made from an ice-cream container.

I don’t own a furnace jacket from the steelworks

or use bicycle clips to hold up track-suit pants.

 

I’m not Novacastrian,

 

I’m not Novacastrian.

                                      J. O. White