Voyager Poem by Rory Hudson

She called me in Sydney
one fine day in September
at noon, when the sun was tall and red above me,
and the pavement was hot, and the people weary,
the city tired, the flowers wilting.

I was a bygone soul,
my voice dry, my face old in its years,
lost in the haze of the city, roaming its thick streets,
as I came from alley to lane, from park to empty park.

She called me from the west,
from beyond my horizons, across hills and cities,
where the magpie calls, the jacaranda blooms,
and the wind blows clear and cool across the water.

I came on the train, that evening;
I spent the night weeping into the darkness outside the window
and the darkness within, broken and hopelessly,
tears drowned by the wheels rumbling beneath the carriages.