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CAMERON HINDRUM

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Two poems

 

At 3 am

 

Shapeless silver-shod moonlight splashes

the polished floorboards: where I like to stand

with you

 

at 3 am

 

while your breathing follows an arc

back to sleep

in my arms

 

While I wait

for an arrival of steady rhythm:

rise and fall, rise and fall

 

and the soft weight of sleep

to hold your weight against me.

 

The curtain is half-open against the quiet world

where everyone is asleep in their own silence

 

Except you

and me

 

But I can wait

 

I’ve got all night

 

And no where else to be.

 

 

 

 

At Storys Creek

 

Except for the ghosts of houses, an abandoned town

            has no memory.

 

The footprints of man and building dissolve

            into gathering ground.

 

An abandoned river with banks of rust

            carries poison-weighted water

 

away from the rain off the distant bluff.

 

Rain is merciful, gentle here, no weeping

            for open scars or lost fortunes.

 

The pillagers are gone, having reaped

            what they could, leaving us to sow

 

while soft rain seeps into wounded earth

            through piled waste, and taints itself.

 

Below the scars and wounds and waste

            still waters in a forgotten river

 

watch the lazy sky.

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CAMERON HINDRUM is a Launceston-based writer and currently Director of the annual Tasmanian Poetry Festival. His short fiction and non-fiction articles have appeared in Famous Reporter, Forty Degrees South, Pendulum and Island magazine. He is currently working on a short script commission from the Australian Script Centre, as well as his first novel. He organises SpeakArt, a semi-regular afternoon reading session for writers in an around Launceston, and lectures in Language Arts and Teacher Education at the University of Tasmania.