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Martin Christmas


Father and Son

​Listening to some Philip Glass piano
flowing from the car’s CD player
I drift away at the top
of the Small Boats Ramp
Outer Harbor.
 
Time passes.
Yawn.
Upright the seat.
 
A father and son are standing
on the Small Boats Ramp below.
The boy is tossing stones into the sea.
The father shows him
how to skim them further.
 
I think of dad.
The tears well up.
I wonder why he never taught me
how to skim stones across the sea.
Skim or sink,
either
would have been just fine.
 
He did once try
to teach me how to play cricket
on an oval
next door.
I said
emphatically, ‘No’.
 
Silly boy.
A seagull looks at me with one eye,
‘Silly man’.
 
The father and son
move to the top of the ramp.
The father continues sharing knowledge
with his son.
 
My father
lately,
although dead past twenty years,
is on my mind again.
He shares his knowledge freely
from the grave.
He teaches me to be a man
as I stand and talk with him,
visit by visit
at the edge of the water
lapping the Small Boats Ramp
at Outer Harbor.
My silent sounding board.
 
I guess that’s as good
as learning how to play cricket
or skimming stones.
A pelican floats by and seems to stare,
‘You got that right, mate’.
 
These days I often think of dad and...
but that’s another visit,
for another day. 
​

Gum Tree Down

​Night.

No wind or storm. 
Gum tree down.
Not yet prime of life
so much potential.
Gum tree down.

Soil, dry, very.
Climate change?
Borers? Didn’t see any.
Gum tree down.

Climate change
on the edge of, 
slowly sliding into, 
gum tree down.

Gum tree down.
Trees either side
wait their turn.
Gum tree down.
Tree down.
Down.

The seagulls, 
seen it all before.
Their dinosaur 
ancestors before them, 
seen it all before.

But
? 
​
Picture


​Martin Christmas' Profile

Beard Fixation

What’s this beard thing
anyway?
Everywhere,
defining a generation,
overflowing to the one
before.
Started small,
sudden explosion.
Not seeing one’s
the anomaly.
Sports, bus stops,
ordinary dudes,
everywhere.
Males connecting
thing? Sub-species
marking?
But not me? Until
last week.
The urge not to shave
irresistible.
I didn’t.
Rebellion.
Primal instinct.
Male instinct.
Viking.
Pillage, plunder,
rape (figure of speech only).
Still stubble.
 
Resolved to go the
distance.
Stick it out.
Glorious release...
till itch or
food
gets lodged in
hairy follicles
repeatedly.
Or Summer.
I’m sweating
like a pig.
Such is life.
Ned Kelly would
agree. 

Chatting with Fellini

Rocked up early for a meeting with a friend
at a wood oven pizza place, warm in
Winter, on the road to Adelaide.
 
This little man with over his collar grey hair
sits in a corner, by a flashy gilded mirror,
wearing a fedora hat and black rimmed glasses.
 
There’s Marilyn and Elvis and Charlie. Audrey
and Harrison and Clark and Vivian (Leigh),
tomorrow is another day, 8½ weeks from Spring.
 
The place near empty. Well-used tables, chairs.
Wooden. If they could speak, what stories to tell,
but for another time, or maybe after midnight.
 
He flashes a serious smile. We talk.
Italian. I once emailed to Barcelona University
in Google Spanish, re-translated it was rubbish,
 
so keep my side to "si" and "si" as he emotes.
His name is Federico, seems he’d
made a film or four. He knew his stuff.
 
Those earlier spoken of, certainly knew him,
though I doubt they’d ever found their marks
on his film sets, and certainly not Elvis, pretty sure.
 
The King and Marilyn were busy anyway, as
they flirted near my table. Harrison the voyeur, had
his whip out and was raiding a lost ark.
 
My friend arrived. M, E, C, A, H, C (Gable) and V,
stepped back onto the walls. Gone with the wind.
I turned to Federico, but only an empty chair.
 
He’d left the room before I could convey how
I had enjoyed his films Satyricon and 8½,
all those years ago, when life was simpler.
 
Fellini’s,
great cappuccinos, pizzas.
​

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