Shorelines

from w
Here are some sketches - mainly pen - when I was at Barwon Heads - rocks and shoreline, and along Western Beach, Geelong. Also two of snow as seen from a train - in the region of Castlemaine.  When people ask why do you draw, sketch, paint  -  take a sketchook everywhere you roam, I think it's because we want to capture shapes and textures that are interesting, not always sublime, but where the details make up a kind of rhythm like music. I like to see repetition in a picture and curved lines. Ruskin says that everyone should draw as well as write, in order to OBSERVE the details, and that's fair enough.

I wrote a poem after that train trip from Melbourne towards Bendigo when the land was covered in snow and I had made those little black and white drawings.
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.