Famous Reporter # 23 - poetry, Brendan Ryan: 'Broken Sleep'

BRENDAN RYAN

Broken Sleep

We hit the smells of outer suburbs

and the weekend begins to disappear.

Waking to drivers whizzing across lanes

billboards reminding me what I have to buy,

I was having an awkward conversation

with a truck driver about snakes.

With some city friends I had kept my distance

from old footy mates drinking themselves into early graves,

in a bar lined by teenage mothers and shooters

eyeing off strangers opening the door.

I wanted you to see the back streets

that like a rubber band keep pulling me back

to desires realised outside a derelict Catholic church,

lives framed by ornamental bridges

and my self standing on a platform

watching the Station Master

wave his red flag at the fast, approaching train.

Then, as now, pine trees swayed overhead.

Their cool shadows kept me quiet

as the mystery of waiting outside a green weatherboard station

with my mother in her Sunday clothes and good white bag.

Now there is a patch of bitumen

where the railway station used to be.

It makes you laugh

that something we spend an hour walking to

doesn't exist.

But like a quiet midday drinker

who finds his seat waiting at the bar

everything here I imagined has become real -

walking to the shop after footy training

the smell of mud under my fingernails -

memories that take you closer to the dirt

to a place larger than yourself.

Here, it takes twenty-five years to become a local

or ten goals in a winning Grand Final to be accepted.

So much is lost behind the window of a passing car.

We squeeze our silences between the freeway barriers.

Ahead of us, city buildings

we swear we'll never return to

again and again.

Brendan Ryan lives in Abbotsford. Why I Am Not a Farmer was published by Five Islands Press in 2000. He received an Australia Council Grant-Emerging Writers in 2001.