Feedback from Pete Hay in response to my poem, Drum...

 I think this is beautiful. It captures the 'love it and hate it' confusion even we fiercest of island patriots possess. And as for the power in the closing stanzas - absolutely unforgettable.

DRUM

These are my familiars:

a white gum veiled in a weaving of shadow,

stringy trunks leaning, one hip pushed to the side

as though an infant might be perched on each bulge.

*

I have lived here, in another lifetime.

Anorexic gums line the road,

reminding me of strangers’ funerals

when I was young.

*

Wattles have cropped up like weeds, as they always do.

A young pine forest, three power lines, arsenic posts.

Someone has written DRUM on the Pass Cyclists Safely sign,

and a No Trespassing addendum warns of 24 hour surveillance-

*

it is like a post-modern Lord’s Prayer.

I once camped in bush like this, but can’t imagine,

these days, setting up a tent amongst the trees.

I was twenty. Such things were possible- though,

*

even then, a murderer lurked behind every tree.

I wonder if newcomers sense it? the murderous intent?

the psycho-pathology of barbed wire fences?

the inanity of graffiti’d messages that mean nothing?

*

Clouds trundle overhead,

closing in the afternoon.

There is something sinister in this island.

We don’t belong.

Note: Pete Hay: These days, [though], Hay prefers to write in more creative modes. He has published six volumes of poetry; one of these as editor, and one, Last Days of the Mill, in collaboration with a visual artist (this book won the People’s Choice Award at the 2013 Tasmanian Book Prize). His most recent books of poetry are Girl Reading Lorca (Picaro, 2015) and Physick (Shoestring, 3016). He also writes personal essays (collected in 2002 as Vandiemonian Essays, with a second volume planned for 2017), commentary (including a stint as a newspaper columnist), and history.