December 6, 2002
Fish & chips for tea, cricket on the radio.
A new moon with the old one sitting in its lap.
That’s what my father used to say
when he saw it like this; & even as a bare crescent
he would turn whatever silver coins he had
over in his pocket & bow
seven times in its direction to ensure
fortune favoured us in the coming month.
Across the Tasman, in another time zone,
the Memorial Concert for Alan will
just be finishing. I’ve seen the program. Eight minutes
for this performer, five for another. All
spelled out, such temporal precision.
Hope it went off okay,
wish I could have been there to be part of it.
Though in a way I was. My poem for Alan
went up on the website last night. First time
I’ve looked at it for five months. Still like what
it says although a small part of its construction
irritates. I want to change a couple of words, feel
a bit guilty that I do, engage myself in
some sort of internal debate over whether you should
leave what was written as a reaction to something
as it was first written or revise it later
when the critic kicks in & kicks out
some of the emotion. Decide to change my
paper copy & leave the electronic version as it is.
Lauren should be home soon so I
turn on the carport light, find five minutes afterwards
that an armada of Christmas beetles has invaded
the illuminated space, arriving out of nowhere
to throw themselves in a kamikaze frenzy
against the walls, the concrete, the cat’s
water bowl. A prototype clone army —
such fanaticism, such uniformity, all
the same size, the same bronze colour.
Confronted with this display of karmic inevitability
I wonder about the power of my father’s
eccentricities. Would Alan have been safe
if he’d carried silver guilders &
turned them over in his pocket as he bowed
to the moon? From what I know about him
nobody would have thought
the actions strange. Don’t know if he
would have shared the superstition.
So cold when I was told the news of his
death. So hot now. Bush fires ring the city,
fanned by the same winds that brought
that big chill earlier. Two hours ago,
as the concert was beginning, a procession
of helicopters were doing the round trip
to the latest fire, off to catch their
15 seconds of flame for the evening
news bulletins. An hour later, at intermission,
with twilight making it too dangerous
to fly at the low height necessary in its
current role as a dive bombing super watertanker,
the giant skycrane nicknamed Elvis
after its home port of Memphis, Tennessee
rumbled overhead returning to its temporary base
& six hours of overnight maintenance. Now
the concert is over & I am alone with the beetles.
I put one of the Modern Jazz Quartet’s recordings
of the Concierto de Aranjuez on the CD
player, am reminded that I’d always wondered
why Chris Bourke used their Django in the
Big Smoke broadcasts. It’s fifties music after all.
Tomorrow is the anniversary of Pearl Harbour.
Think I’ll celebrate it by putting together
a ragtag armada & launching a pre-emptive strike
against the Americans & their weapons
of mass destruction. Take Elvis along, liberate
the Spirit of St Louis & the Wright brothers’ Flyer
from the Smithsonian — a delightful irony, &
I have the floor plans on a T-shirt. Then there’s
the Gossamer Albatross that crossed the Atlantic
under pedal power, the hotair balloon
in which Steve Fossey circumnavigated
the globe, da Vinci’s flying machines. An airshow
for Alan. Unprogrammed. Unrehearsed.
Then again, tomorrow in the USA will be today.
Or maybe it’s today that is tomorrow. I can handle
the time zone differences in hours ahead or behind
but the days confuse me. It’s why I’ve
always thought JFK was assassinated on November 23.
I decide to wait one more day. Then I will act.
Mark Young
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