By London Road Poem by jim hogg

It's been a while since you were seen
On Sydney High Street, in your jeans
An old guitar hung round your neck
Your fingers dancing on the frets

And with your violin you won
A thousand hearts beneath the sun
You must have put on quite a show
In San Francisco long ago


You told me later you were wild
And at the fair tried every ride
And I'd been welcome at the source
If only I had stayed the course

Your Cosmopolitan in hand
You rode the train across the sand
One winter's night to Kelvingrove
When you'd decided to let go


And I was laughing through the storm
When you were sailing for Cape Horn
So many boats, so little time
Then suddenly you'd crossed the line

It takes a lifetime to break free
And even then it's hard to see
Who plots the course, who fills the sail
Why losers win and winners fail

(chorus)
I think of you, and curves contend
With wisps of smoke where rivers bend
Your green eyes glinting in the night
Dubonnet by the old pier light
When I was mercury and clay
I wouldn't be so coy today

But you and I were asymptotes
Though when we'd won each other's votes
And stretched full out by London Road,
We could have reaped, we could have sowed -

Behind the hedge the summer heat
Was just about enough to beat
Our sense of shame to smithereens
Back in that cauldron of our teens


Now decades later on your knees
You're naked in the buzzing breeze
And I'm imagining I'm there
And watching as you dry your hair

Or on my back upon your deck
With you on board and turned to check
The rising waves around the stern
Like witnesses who've come to learn:


The very little things that steer
The fledgling bird so far, so near;
That any wind can bring us snow
And just how little we still know

And even that's not what it seems
You were Diana in my dreams
And for your body I'd have fought
But couldn't let myself be caught

(chorus)
I think of you and curves contend
With wisps of smoke where rivers bend
Your green eyes glinting in the night
Dubonnet by the old pier light
When I was mercury and clay
I wouldn't be so coy today


25 12 12

(For the minister's daughter who was much more special than we allowed her to know...)