Last Days of Watsonia High

I heard from Hooper you were dead
like whale song in watery fragments
through Donovan’s harmonica

see you running down the corridor
in velvet defiance of the headmaster’s
ropes to separate the sexes

that lasted as long as peace

you and Debbie chided my chauvinism
over My Lai photos that dragged barbed wire
through our country’s clogged heart

that first ballet pirouetted
in teeming Swanston Street moratoriums
polished tiles skis for worn out socks

these things the apartheid of years

can’t separate from a barricade relief
mixes mislabelled tea chests leaving homes
bite down on a hard spoon of distance

should have kissed that wavy dolphin Suzanne
splashing behind your knee

The three old friends mentioned here are now deceased, the last just a couple of days ago. Time to try harder to keep the silence at bay.

First published in Australian Poetry Anthology Volume 4 edited by Sarah Holland-Batt and Brook Emery 2015.

‘Unstill Mosiacs’ Busybird Publishing  2019
https://booko.com.au/9781925949100/Unstill-Mosaics-The-Book-of-Love-Loss-and-Longing

Photo by Adam Diston ‘Cutting a Sunbeam’.