Ben Hession is a disabled writer, living on Dharawal country (Wollongong), south of Sydney, Australia. His poetry has been published in Eureka Street, the International Chinese Language Forum, Cordite Poetry Review, Mascara Literary Review,Bluepepper, Marrickville Pause, The Blue Nib, Live Encounters: Poetry and Writing, Antipodes and Don Bank Live Poets anthology Can I Tell You A Secret? Ben Hession is a poetry critic and a music journalist involved with community broadcasting.
Riding Back to La Perouse (A Horse Poem)
I remember horses grazing in paddocks between lanes
of Anzac Parade. Funny, how they could mark the time
through unattended pastures that space the way to La Perouse:
along the old tram line, green-crowned grown, like nearby crown land,
never without purpose, if unplanned, before new designs lined
government reports and fences hemmed into history anecdotal details
of acreage and pathways my uncle rode down on, from Randwick
to Conwong or Yarra Bay. And his horses – urban brumbies –
bore subsequent generations feeding on fresh grass next to
the Botany-Kamay waters, where memories began gathering their
perpetual momentum: that is, until through a car window
I can see, as an adult, the price of real estate, and houses raised
on dreams and speculation, bewildering homes. I re-trace my world
since that last tomorrow of many, many years ago, and search for horses
ruminating, or running impulsively between childhood and the present –
sometimes I see a vivid few, on fields passing by, like they’d never left.