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PRAYER OF THE MORNING Be still & wonder at the works of the Lord. That's what God said via his media units of the time. He also sent instructions on the washing of the clothes of lepers, he was thorough as any Jewish mother but I took Him up on this & stood before a paper trick sun snuck over a morning mist before a bird washed world of noise under a networking bustle of leaves In a day without family worries & wars to forget money carless & coatless. To have sex & coffee beaches, massage & tandoori good TV, dry cider. & like God promised my soul was warmed in a godlessly simple way. I have joined the loiter before the paths of peace - a Sydney-kind-of-queue diffuse & surreptitious. © Les Wicks |
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Commentary:
I don't feel immediately comfortable with writing about writing - I pretend my style is idiot savant (9 parts idiot). I grew up in a household without books but in a ghetto of proto-artsy friends in an outer suburbs tract housing area of Sydney. Because I was lousy at music & painting I chose words (they already were my defence against an array of school bullies). Twenty years on it has been my life - but the past is always so much more manageable looking back. I have been to university but avoided any subjects crossing over literature. Here in Australia there are a proliferation of communications degrees, all of which regularly wreck as many poets as they make. "Prayer of the Morning" is a part of an ongoing search in my work for a definition of the Australian soul. A gentle, tolerant (even if by virtue of laziness) and quietly anarchic country. The poem ends with one of the defining differences I felt between living in Sydney & London. Your bus queues are orderly & polite. Any line in Sydney is so diffuse only an expert could recognise it! It's hopefully both fun and moving. Les Wicks Bonfire contributor |