WRITING WHERE YOU LIVE....

I'm always impressed when writers can put together a poem, short story, or even a novel set in the place they live. I read poems set in inner suburbs, tramping grounds of the poet who lives just around the corner. Short stories set in streets that are seeped in reality, down to the pigeons on the statue of some long forgotten founder that stares morosely to the west.

I've written about where I grew up as a child, but where I live now?

Perhaps I need to live in the gritty inner suburbs? The rambling countryside where the view is of cows and haystacks? Or in a small coastal town where life revolves around the weather?

Perhaps I don't feel at 'home' where I live?

I have attempted poems set in my suburb. But I find it so hard to get the right emotional contact. I don't want it to sound cool or mawkish, remote or seeped in purple prose.

And don't get me wrong, I love where I live.

It's a suburb with one general store cum post office, tennis courts and no church. There are no footpaths, about a dozen nurseries and more trees than residents. It's a suburb where rosellas come for breakfast and echidnas stay for lunch.

Perhaps I should give it another go. Make it one of my goals. To write a poem set where I live.

I did write this poem, years ago when we moved in, published in Tamba.

Perhaps it's time for a new one?

PATCH OF PARADISE

i walk along the rain rutted path
beneath mountain ash shackled
in ivy’s cuffs, past red hot pokers
and agapanthus, lilies sprawling
down the bank, flower heads
like spent condoms
easily discarded on the ground
listen to kookaburras come
into full deep throats of laughter
the rustle of invisible birds
in the darkness of regrowth
past a sign telling of five
acres, barren of home, eager
for a quick sale.