The Golden Mile
A Book of Poems
by
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It astounds me that Robert Burns was only thirty-seven when he died. Despite not having a formal education, his output and command of language were prodigious. Why mention Robert Burns? Well, on my first trip to Ireland and Scotland in 2010, I fell for Scotland and not Ireland. This is somewhat surprising, given my mostly Irish heritage, (three grand-parents were of Irish descent) but my maternal grand-mother’s family came from Inverness in the Scottish highlands. That connection can be seen in the poem Katie McKenzie , the last stanza of which reads: And now a hundred and fifty have flown, that new tree shoot is now fully grown. The prosperous folk no longer from here, but the scent of the heather, so strong and so dear. The story of the mass migration from Scotland and Ireland in the first part of the nineteenth century to the new world has been told many times. But when the victims of the privations that led to the exodus are your own ancestors, the story becomes more personal. My ability to stray from the point is a clear bequest from my Irish ancestry as is my garrulous nature, both of which I tried to capture in The Barrow Man. This poem is based on an actual event that Lesley and I observed in the market at Limerick in Ireland in 2010. The farmer hardly sold any of his turnips or potatoes but that did not seem to bother him. The conversations he had were more important than any sales. The last verse captures the moment: He’d chatted and smiled and smoked his pipe; Food enough, he guessed for a man of his type. And when he got home and settled in digs; ‘twas ‘taties and ‘nips for three lucky pigs. I felt the urge to write things down in verse often as an adult, usually in response to an emotional event. A stressed long term friendship produced Fifty Years. A stint in the Coronary Ward at Epworth produced The Albatross but I was far from depressed when I wrote it. Trips abroad and seemingly unimportant incidents within the family were the stimulus for most of my poems. I found that trips abroad brought out in me unusual emotional responses, like home sickness (Home), frustration with foreign languages (Trenni), loneliness (Madre) and a fascination with history (Arno and Questions). In 2007 Lesley and I shouted the extended family a trip to Italy to celebrate our sixtieth birthdays. It was then that I felt homesick for the first time since 1956 when, as a ten year old, my father sent me on a camp in the desert designed for the sons of ex-servicemen to toughen them up. I wrote about this most recent bout of homesickness in the poem I called simply Home. I really like this piece. The last quatrain reads: Yet from afar I hear her call. Her rhythm beats in sounds so small. My restless yearning heeds that sound; And so I must be homewood bound. From within the family, Lesley Irene Ward appears intermittently under several aliases. She doesn’t get a mention under any alias in The Last Boquet, yet it is one of my favourite poems about her. I wrote it in 2007, sitting in the rooms of her oncologist, awaiting a consultation to discuss a flare up of her cancer. As we left home for the visit one cool June morning, I caught a glimpse of some late blooming roses in the front garden. I used that memory as a distraction from the awful reality that was about to confront Lesley once again. The poem is my attempt to clutch at something ordered from the chaos enveloping us. We both love the garden you see! Here are the concluding lines: Winter blooms sing out of tune; The sun replaced by solstice moon. But rich they are in tone and scent; A floral gift that’s heaven sent. Her anonymity is similarly preserved in The Veil but she is there all right, as the narrator. This work allows for the introduction of her mantra for life:-Ergo si relapsus resurgo (When I fall down I get up again). In Mary Kip she channels Australia’s first and only saint (Mary Mackillop); and rightfully so! Eponymous poems disclose her identity but she appears again under the guise of La Madre in Mumma E Shoppa and as Madre in the poem by that name. The extended family produced a brace of poems, the golden thread being a celebration of an enriched family life. Sometime disasters (Beads Up Your Nose) produce humour upon a recounting; sometimes the family provides a structure for a reflection on an important aspect of simply living in a compassionate way (Today). If only this could be a universal and everlasting state of being. Of travel it is often said that it broadens the mind and so it came to pass with Questions, which tries to make sense of the grandeur of Saint Peter’s basilica in Rome, presiding as it does over a constituency that includes millions of the extremely poor. There is always room for humour (Sunday Morning; Beads up your nose; Mumma E Shoppa and Bella Regazza) This capacity reflects the Australian identity, honed over five or six generations of new settlers. I address the angst of the dispossessed traditional owners of our land (Survival) but I provide no solutions to the problem. I dedicate this work to my father Desmond James Ward who introduced me to poetry in the 16 short years we had each other. His father David James Ward was a poet, or so his death certificate says. The history of the name, Ward suggests that the Ward clan were the poets in the court of the ancient O’Brien kings. The heraldic coat of arms for the Ward clan is of the royal colours, purple and gold and bears a royal crown above a castle. That’s close enough for me to have the temerity to have a go at writing some verse. Perhaps the most personally moving piece I have written about my father is The Golden Mile, the inspiration for which was tracing my father’s footsteps of seventy years before. Let me explain. In World War Two my father was on the HMS Arawa, a heavy cruiser serving in the North Atlantic, which provided protection for convoys bringing supplies from the United States and Canada in 1940 during the Battle of the Atlantic. Winston Churchill said of this crucial part of the War:- “The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril” I recall seeing a postcard he sent to his sister Molly (then his next of kin) from Edinburgh in which he talked about the Edinburgh Castle. The road leading up to the castle is called the Golden Mile. When Lesley and I were there in 2009, we walked along the golden Mile up to Edinburgh Castle. Let this excerpt from that poem be my last words of dedication to my father’s memory:- We walk together but not in time. If only we could, how very sublime. He, with fear, for battles to wage; much later his son, on a different page. In very recent times, I have experimented with the Sonnet, the Villanelle, the Pantoum and the Sestina. These are ancient poetic forms undergoing something of a revival of late as part of the New Formalism movement. They require strict adherence to a set of construction rules but the outcome is often a surprise and sometimes pleasing.
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About the Book
The Golden Mile is a book of poems but it is more than that: it is a love story. It speaks of one man’s love first of his brave father who died, when the author was a teenager, of disabilities caused by his service in the Battle of the Atlantic during World War II and then of his own family. He dedicates the book to his late father’s memory. He retraced his father’s footsteps along the Golden Mile that leads up to Edinburgh Castle seventy years after he father did so during a break in hostilities. He writes about that movingly in the title piece in the collection. Most of us can point to a favourite song, place, scent or possession that triggers memories of a loved one who has, as Banjo Patterson describes, gone over the range. He introduces you to his own family one at a time. He calls Lesley, his wife, the mother of his three children and grandmother of their five grandchildren by the affectionate names of Madre, La Madre and the Contessa as well as her real name. Their adventures are hilarious and at the same time heart rending. Navigating the removal of a cheap bead his young daughter placed up her nose - Heaven knows why? - one minute and coping with stage four breast cancer the next, takes you on a roller-coaster ride which our author captures brilliantly in this collection. At a time when men are asked to express their feelings our author needs no coaching. He uses the “l’ word frequently, filially and unexpectedly. He shows us that if you say what you feel and feel what you say, there is a lot to be gained by everyone. If you are a thinker, a believer in the golden rule and a lover of people, this is definitely a book for you.