March 9, 2013

One poem by Ian C Smith


Vinyl Dreams


Rain, mood-inducing, muffles sound.
I resurrect my hoard of old records,
awestruck like an amateur archaeologist.
Going away, coming back, interstate, overseas,
pushing, hunched, through life’s turnstiles,
the dying radiance of doomed love,
surly wasteland of work’s wrong turns,
boredom, burglary (robbers’ good  taste?)
resolutions and revolutions,
New Years, mid-life, chemical, technical,
funerals, police cars, hospitals, trains,
I harbored these commemorative tracks.
How did Elvis, Fats Domino, Paul Anka,
this motley throb of wistful voices echoing
in acoustic chambers of agitation,
survive the slippage of my years?
I softly blow dust from memorized sleeves,
this connection to my churning heart then,
that past, a ghosted outline of the present,
my teeming brain casting me back.


Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in Axon:Creative Explorations,The Best Australian Poetry, Island, Poetry Salzburg Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Southerly,& Westerly  His latest book is Here Where I Work, Ginninderra Press (Adelaide).  He lives in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, Australia.

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