Flemington to Flinders Station #59
By Philip Salom
Published 1 January 2021
in daylight the tram lines incised in concrete
seen bare as a dam wall without the elegant
curvatures of wall or flats of blue water the
weight of wanting or wait towards an empty
horizon as it waits back the minutes' empty
carriages shuffling Out as ghost In as body
tram as the easiest of graces relax and arrive
relax and arrive say the steel wheels on steel
lines they do not move as they move you in
to character or cause to reality as your genes
this hotel corridor long uneasy waiting room
seats taken as if hope lined up in the citizens
her coat her bag an arch and a church door
overhang her Greek Orthodox she a person
she the expression her face and her dark eyes
opposite in the creasing air along the carriage
each person in iPod or age slung like a bag
the weight of it at the bottom of them their
next and next level of silence almost visible
over heads over headcovers over a country
as sunlight is moving on and off quite over
with cool and its well whatever casualness
as traffic sounds the tram's unmusical stasis
(what isn't said is the counterpoint around
them and the people thicken thinking in it)
knowing or forgetting or as if destinations
scroll through them as the ghost and body
of them carrying on yes without distraction
without anybody knowing in the oh passive
and promissory and undying shoulders and
bound to not bound to or seeing whatevers
oh indifferent voices someone upload them
they ask or they imagine a resignation leads
them to a may or may not alter them or be
in a carriage like a carriage without volition
hear a tallish man talking on his mobile like
a divorce lawyer getting into the oh painful
and the crueller time oh his words his tone
the Ist of travelling almost lost then a motor
winding down somehow oh out of balance
under the tram floor calls off disappointing
spell broken terminus the tram almost