South Sea Odyssey
Philip Brown
Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse 2010 (view all the winners)
First Prize
I
Elusive treasure is my quest
Glimpsed but as halo in the haze
Stray eyelash caught in sunshine dust
A fistula from long lost days
Loose fragments from a fragile world
Where time has leached through porous stone
Kaleidoscope of patterns laid
From memories so deftly hewn
An Aztec temple, toucan perched
Or Hong Kong junk its work arcane
A seaplane skimming, sunset touched
Or laden Silk Road camel train
Sharp pictures etched on celluloid
That leap from vivid dreams untold
Dense images which fill a void
From toybox spilled to adulthood
No longer can I tell what's real
With mind and body in divorce
Romance and beauty I can feel
More solid than my earthly chores.
With tickets bought and baggage packed
Imagining the sounds and smells
Of heart-rent scenes from Hollywood
I search for where it really dwells
II
Aloof in airtight jet encased
Is Polynesia's pearly string
Ellipse of coral atolls seen,
Enchanted spectral fairy ring.
But reefs that monstrously are cursed
An idyll raped by nightmare stealth
Apocalypse with shame rehearsed
Atomic tests: brave show of wealth
A jarring shiver wracks the plane
On sight of sunbaked concrete sheet
Triumphal screech of touching down
Then resting bathed in wreaths of heat.
A weighty bag cuts with a thrill
Of movement through exotic air
A rusting vessel set to sail
From tranquil Iles de Gambier
The sweet warm breeze upon my face
Combines with rope and diesel smell
A joyous yaw, salt spray to taste
Fat slap of waves against the hull.
Swift flying fish in blue ink sea,
Not just an acrobatic turn
But stuff of dreams, romantically
The reason that a traveller's born
III
Idyllic island hideaway
Nirvana larded through the souls
Of those who sense infinity
From uncaged minds romantic muse.
Stark jewel in vastest ocean set
Implacable against the dawn
Where mutineers their fate did meet
My Treasure Island chest; Pitcairn
Heroic rock stands sentinel
Against mind's flow of reckless waves
Volcanic truth a crucible
For fecund Eden's teeming lives
Scale model of community
Redoubt resisting ceaseless seas
Small speck that spawned an industry
Of rootless dreams and fantasies
Amorphous ocean of my thoughts
By wind and currents scattered wide,
Ideas in spume and foamed onslaught
Are sucked in with the restless tide.
The mind can wander where it will
Without the body giving chase
But as crustaceans seek a shell
I naked, need my thought's embrace
IV
I step into a picture book
And find the glossy mildewed page
Has coarse red dust and jagged rock
Where life is lived out on the edge
From desperate violence has been wrought
The garden orchard Adamstown
Where human craft and nature meet
Evoking picture postcard charm
The wilderness is not subdued
But welcomes work of man's intent;
Squat houses wreathed in flowering glade,
Or rusting shed as ornament
Soft atrophy breaths life from earth
As nature soothes the artifice
With creeping mottled microbe growth,
Adagio of mournful grace.
Aglow with echoed sparks of home
Arcadia turns to commonplace
Just lachrymal nostalgic balm
Exotic waste of paradise.
And yet pursuing idle thought
On Pitcairn's kumara coloured soil
My shadow fleetingly I caught
And fantasy was tangible.
