here

in the bookshelves of the

holiday house is a book of

John’s poems—also

Les—a fat spine

appropriately.

Why is that here?

Masochism?

I am unlikely to read it.

Anyway,

I wonder what John’s got to say—

this time.

                 *

The rest of the shelf

is novels others have left.

                  *

                                  Across

the table from me

my jacket is draped over the chair,

reminding me a little of John—

a presence and an absence.  It

looks more like what he would wear

than I would—& it’s empty,

no one there.

                                    Why write

so often about John Forbes?  I knew him

only so well.

                            To

rise to some challenge

—test—

or ‘occasion’, yes?

(No?)  (Maybe?)
                                   The radio—

ABC from Hobart—

is playing: very good music

that I don’t know—

in the adjoining room, so it’s

both on but ignored

easily enough, as if I’m

alone more or less—

opposite the chair & jacket,

looking at it, but sometimes

at the things between us on the table

a thin-striped table cloth, blue &

white—pens pencils salt & pepper shakers—

books—that Cath & I are reading—

one of those yellow Spirax notebooks

A-5, a small stub of candle …

a tape measure,

also black & yellow—black with some yellow detailing.

Stuff.

                 The light is mounted

behind me, on the wall,

rather than above:

the room is lit like a bar

or cantina—& they are those sort

of doors opposite, too—

bar-room half doors, open,

leading into the middle space

(& the radio).

Low ceiling, stucco walls, an earthen,

nougat-magenta  The shelves—

the book shelves—

since I began with them,

are on my left, at

the far end of the room.
This is not the sort of poem

John would write.

He would not see the point.

And in fact I don’t see the point

as yet, tho I may hope to find one.
Christ knows where.
                                              The

news is on now, following

cricket all day.  It would have been

worth following it

most of the last decade, for

Kerry O’Keefe’s commentary—

his wheezy laugh, his humour—

tho I didn’t.  (John might have.

But John has been gone

a bit too long.)
                                                I always

try to write something

when I’m down here, on Bruny.

                                                            Start

& wait & see where they go.  John chimes

with the cricket—& maybe with

the cowboy bar-doors—but otherwise

he is a bit urban

to gel with the island—

& holidays.  Or is that just

John-as-I-conceive-him?  He

happens to be on the shelf tho.

That is a fact.

                                I look at the poems,

from the back: ‘Love Poem’, ‘Night Shift’,

‘History of Nostalgia’

                                                “ … attitude

is the poems’ currency, an asset

only when it is spent” it says

on the cover.  I wonder if John

wrote that copy.
                                              I wonder

where I am going with this?
A long time trying to locate an attitude

or summon one—like someone scowling,

or non-committal, leaning against a wall

(near a corrugated iron water tank—

as I envisage it—now—tho how or why?)

who pushes himself away, finally, with

some resolve
                                       (spits in the grass?)
         throws smoke away / spits in the grass
Tho this is uncharacteristically—of me—

not quite urban, & Australian, tho

I am an Australian.
                 Like 24 million other people
                                         —Is that my attitude?—
more or less the same, more or less different; up late

in my case; trying to write poetry