Poetry
 
 
 

Helen Hagemann's Poetry & Prose

Picnic

Clouds in white coats dress the mountain.
There are birds in the leaves of the creek, boys
and girls arranging handfuls of sunflowers.
 

Young Duggan rummages in the bush for
kindling to smoke out the Apaches.
Geronimo! he yells, High-ho Silver, away!
 

Cowboy suits flash a sheriff’s silver. Shoes
hang upside down in trees like cockatoos.
Frogs serenade from the bank. A leaf
 

ferries past on a log. The boys heighten
noise, upending and splashing rocks; kids
in every crevice of the wind playing shotgun.
 

Stagecoach! Cazzam! River mud cupped
into balls reaches for the flick of a feather
crossing the spaces of trees. Shovelfulls of
 

laughter. The day becomes an echo of itself.
A picnic is repacked like its sounds, earlier.
Calls whisk across the water like smoke.

Mountain Bike

Back from the island, under the
pine needles of a Christmas tree –
 

plump wheels, silver lines of an
electro-cardiograph of good health.
 

On Rottnest, my hire-bike wobbled
into holidaymakers, sandy edges.
 

You counted the distance between us,
tripped metres for my abandoned car.
 

Now your luminous smile broadens over
dual-brakes, eighteen Highland gears.
 

Is it the tinsel North star, cyclo-computer
strapped to the wheel, or my broad eyes
 

that show how far we’ve come?

Log Ride, Hansaland Germany

 

We enter this watery kingdom,
the yippee ki-aye of the West with its replica
log house, smokestack, a log flume
that sprays into sudden bursts.
Laughter runs amok as we glide
along narrow canals, sense the air change as the bow
opens curved waves, symmetrical wings.
With each thump and twist, our children shriek
at possible horizons, strike sparks of water
that take us to cloud, conifer and ridgeback hill.
In minutes we are beyond the lattés, souvenirs
and gingerbread men, pausing over Sierksdorf,
Lüneburger Heide with neatly clipped
hedgerows, tulips, the purple hills of Sprötze.
Beyond, Hamburg is in miniature
with its shoebox houses, flea-size families.
At the summit, the log ascends and the world falls away.
White plumes soak riders on either side
and in the distance the roller coaster approaches
concert level, our boy rattling the rail for fun.
In this moment that passes so quickly,
like a German summer,
our children shimmer in tiny droplets
from an avalanche of foam,
and when we alight
another ride is necessary.

Read Other Poems from a new work-in-progress
"Rhapsody in a Coat Pocket"


The Word Evangeline -
Notes on My first literary collection "Evangelyne & other poems"
The word Evangelyne/ Evangeline has its roots in the Greek language.
'Evangelium' or 'euangelion' means 'good tidings'.
For a girl's name - angel of God.

How to contact me-
Phone on (08) 9343 0072
or Email: Helen Hagemann 

or write for information to PO Box 331, WANNEROO, Western Australia 6946

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