Tim Heffernan
I walk that day seeking the signs carrying in my backpack Words, trustworthy and true. My letter to the Herald didn’t make the opinion’s page but I wasn’t surprised as it was poetry, Today’s clouded sky is a gauze bandage to heal this infection. It always begins at Central and I head down past the sleeping-bagged cocoons, still grubby and yet to emerge. In George Street two more are attached by dribbling threads to the steps of St Peter Julian and the Central Baptist Church. At Saint Andrew’s Cathedral a mural of Jonah and the whale reminds me, I called to the Lord out of distress and he answered me. So I cross the road and from the footpath pick up a card, a crossword–the Gospel truth, All that the Father gives me will come to me. And at Dymock’s I buy some Vonnegut, remembering the first time I was mad with Revelations and Slaughterhouse 5. At Martin Place the wreaths from Anzac Day remain clustered around the Cenotaph and I wonder if I am meant to cry, but there is no rainbow, only Lawrence begging in his great coat. After I palm him twenty, we take communion with the Continental Cup-a-Soup they are giving away. He is a socialist so when he doesn’t finish he hands me his remains and I drink them before we part. Still thirsting I head to the Mercantile but Duncan’s gallery trips me with Christ amongst the landscapes and for our family’s Bible I choose The Passion because Mel made it look real to me. I take these things with me to the Quay, only stopping to buy music from the Koories playing there. Climbing the concrete steps the Utzon Room is empty but for a suit coat draped on a chair near the tapestry so I try it on and it fits and I cry out in the Opera House. In the gardens of Farm Cove I pilfer the pockets for answers. Three pens, one a fountain and a message from Anais Nin stitched into the lining, Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. Inflated, I leave my words at the Art Gallery of NSW and at St Mary’s Cathedral I recite my mother’s rosary and pray, Make me the channel of your peace. I stop to speak to Lawrence again at the intersection of George Street and Ultimo Road and at Central a silent Jehovah’s Witness hands me a pamphlet to read on the train trip home.
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Published – Stoned Crows and other Australian icons, prose poems and microfiction, Eds Julie Chevalier & Linda Godfrey. Spineless Wonders, 2013
Tim Heffernan - Poems 