The snow danced a tarantelle

from Wendy
One train journey I was amazed that the land from Woodend to Castlemaine was covered with snow. It happens about once every ten years. I have only seen snow once in Geelong, a few inches banking up beside the church - a few days after a lass from Labasa arrived for a holiday, wearing a summer dress and flip-flops!

The Geelong Art gallery has a current exhibition of snow landscape photographs, so I did some sketches there and also found sketches I did on the train that day. I used photo-edit stamp to change the sketch to make it very like the view I had on that train journey.

The poem was written in response to seeing a couple at the Melbourne station and I wondered 'what if' they were parting...

Two Journeys

I watch the Macedon landscape from the train,
A burnt hillside and atonal Heysens,
Until passengers stir and buzz, interrupt my pain.

The whitened land is webbed in black meanders,
Corel-draw, photo negatives with textured dots
As snow covers the world with a magic glissando.

But now, I crawl through embers that have gone
Cold, rejection hisses an errant flame. I softly
Weep for that which might have been,

A look, a gesture, a ‘come on’, but on the way
The bliss has gradually dissolved to sludge.
No matter, let Pachelbel’s Canon ungently play.

Again the land is blurred, depressed like me,
No longer a silken creped euphoria;
A straggly blonde unkempt and tired land.

I too lack sparkle, stare in silence, ‘You pine
For love, but it’s ephemeral,’ they day. I write
Bleak letters and wonder why the grey line

Is no longer feverish, touching. There’s no gain
To write but say, I loved. Yet, I remember the day
The snow danced a tarantella at Castlemaine.