Philip Mead: poem: Ithaca Road

You’ll be lost in the headlong city, turning older
The house can stay open for another October

I’ll be wandering aimlessly across the glassy weir
Unmediated the finches scatter, wheel and veer

Now you can wear your new transitions
Imagine you’ve co-evolved with the country’s margins

It’s expanding away from us, the infobahn of lights
An accelerating mentalese of disordered nights

There’s no saying where the willow-veiled portal is
The signs are all shot away by Remington pellets

The night train is like a highway squall heading our way
A Zanzibar light hangs in the corner apartment in ‘Marina del Rey’

Planes rip through the sky, crumpled up at home, I’m a Midori bottle I am
You’re always setting out, one arm around memory, like Skyline Sam.

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* this poem is mainly set in Elizabeth Bay, Sydney, Australia, and all the place names refer to this setting.

Philip Mead is a critic and reviewer of Australian poetry and teaches Australian literature at the University of Western Australia.