Creative Writing - Sample Poems

Convincing Ground*

headstones bend in coastal breeze.

All afternoon we drive, but headstones

give no shadow. We wind up our windows,

clouds retreat, we pretend that the day is blue.

We drive past paddocks, scar trees hold

orders of service. We drive past towns

full of cemeteries, headstones on pub verandas.

We drive past cemeteries: wheat crops, wind farms,

the unused olive branches. We drive past

pools and lakes, pretend again the day is blue.

Headstones rise all round us, we see them

walk to courts of law. We drive and drive

and drive, in search of an open grave.

*The site, in the Victorian town of Portland, of the first recorded massacre of Aborigines by white Australians.

** First published National Indigenous Times, 2006