By Vita Forest
This morning at the oval
I walked by lanky legged men in white flannels
Standing about on the grass
And a woman pushing a pram around the white picket perimeter
And a troupe of elderly Chinese
Limbering up
Following the leader in two lines
Dancing to the tune of a small tinny speaker
While their handbags and shopping hung on the fence
On hooks they had brought
especially for that purpose
And as I passed the playground
I noticed the gates were topped with a pair of
Smiling crocodiles
Beaming down at the squealing children
And as I stood on one leg in the yoga class
trying to keep my balance
While trains thundered beneath us
The teacher boasted how when tested
The results said she must be a mere girl of twenty
While later on the train
A mere girl of twenty
Addressed the whole carriage with her tale of
Domestic violence, pregnancy and homelessness
And I emptied my pockets into her open hand
And thought that in another life
She could be a great orator
And I hope that life is yet to come
And at Central I sat on an empty railway platform
and drew the trains
as the wires above me
drew their own squiggles against the clouds
And later we met under the archway of rainbow balloons
Heralding Mardi Gras
Like the rainbow flags that draped shoulders and the rainbow socks
on rainbow legs and rainbow hats and rainbow cat ears
resting over pink hair and glitter eye lashes
Or perhaps just over a t-shirt reading
Fearless
We met beneath the rainbow
to see the world through others’ eyes
Through their palettes and pens and pencils
That they used
Hunched behind a cup of tea
Or standing in front of a statue
Or a stain-glass window
Or beneath the curved roof over the place
Where journeys begin and end
And in the end
Who’s to really know?
If the train was really there
If the door was really open
If he really held her hand
But it looks real enough for now.
Jotterizing 