WOULD THAT…
by Margo Poirier

WOULD THAT…..


Would that answers
could come with
the same ease as breathing

Would that peace
could come with
the same ease as falling asleep.

Would that love
could come with
the same ease as peeing.

CARLTON DAYS 1

Living in the present moment the
rubber band of memory bounces
back to tall, ancient halls of
Melbournian academia where
literary luminaries aimed their
poetic arrows fair and square,
finding their mark in earnest
hungry minds who

having had their fill
of Chris Wallace-Crabbe,
Vincent Buckley and just a smidgen
of Beatrice Faust leapt with
brimming confidence into the
bubbling cauldron of newt and
fresh white mice to spawn and ooze
their own creative genius all over
the crumbling pillars of higher learning.

Yet it was Dylan who claimed my heart,
Thomas and not Bob whose words would
firmly sink the poetic flag into Virgin territory,

ripe for Settlement.


The present moment reclaims me,
a ghostly mantle of old poets
brushes my shoulders a final time,
falls to the floor and leaves me while
 remnants of whispered sonnets drift with
wisps of pipe smoke from beneath
the door of Vin’s study.

CARLTON DAYS 2

Remember, my love,
wine in coffee cups
at that cafe whose name
I don’t remember –
and Jimmy Watson on very
special occasions when
coins would tumble willingly
onto wine glass counters and
we would drown our study worries
lying briefly in the arms of Bacchus?
Those were the days my friend.
We sang because we were the days.

Floor dwellers in older than old
rented cottages, walls hung with
hippy hessian decor, we
drank, smoked and drowsed to strains
of Cohen and Baez, tripping over chipped,
empty coffee mugs, reciting dreadful
poetry of new genius because we were
spawned with flowers in our hair and honey
on our lips, inventors of free love, creators
of new possibilities.
But only in Carlton.

About the Author:

Margo Poirier

My name is Margo Poirier. I am a poet and a writer living in the Adelaide Hills. My first poetry anthology ‘Moon Shards’ was published in 2000. Over a span of twenty-five years my poetry has appeared in numerous literary anthologies and radio broadcasts. More recently, Ginninderra Press has published two chap books of my work which also features in two of their anthologies. I have had two books published: ‘Unzipped’ 2013– a short story anthology and ‘A Previous Life’, 2017- a novel. I am a qualified Massage Therapist and Professional Counsellor and have just finished another novel.