steely dan phil

Tonight I was just about to throw out a paper bag that the old man had kept some of his papers in when I saw a scrap at the bottom, that didn't look much like scrap. It turned out to be a cutting from an old newspaper and indeed it was: a poem I had published in what must have been the Canberra Times (regrettably there's not enough of the cutting to date it).

You see, I went through a poetry period, starting in about year 11 with a teacher who was really quite a good bloke and encouraged us - to do things like this ("Phil, your poems are too dense: K, yours are too light; N, yours are just awful"). Yes, this is encouragement.

K - do you remember that? Worms? Poems about worms? Plays about worms?

I kept it up for a few years after high school and I've still got a folder of them somewhere (I hope). Anyway, as a sort of insight into the evolution of Leafy Western Suburbs Man, I give you Cold Steel. Sometime in the early 1970s. I wasn't big on revising so this would have been how it came out.

Cold Steel

Not for me the cold steel of your buildings;
Cold,
Impersonal
Unnatural.
For me, the grass,
Scented as home, and friendliness,
Warm and comforting,
Close to creation.

Not for me the sterility of your logic;
Sterile,
Calculating,
Unnatural.
For me, meditation on an empty field,
Eternal, inviting,
Yielding to intrusion by family,
And familiar welcomes.