Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Five November-December 2024
The orphaned truth, poems by Linda Adair.
The orphaned truth
‘meeting’ Margaret from Roscommon
At the twilight of the last day before
the clock outpaced the sun
you drew me to you and those souls
you claimed as yours
I stood in that unkempt cemetery
facing the crumbling marble of denial
the patina of neglect
recalling a complex tribalism
a sweep of arum lillies carved in relief
on the cold stone cross laid down
upon the dark frost-burned lichen
blanketing your family plot
I needed to tell you
my great grandfather was your second son
a quiet man who kept the property going but
lost his family when his young wife died
after yet another birth
that motherless infant my grandfather
sent to live with aunts in the city
saw his father only occasionally
and rarely at the farm
hiding the past or protecting the future.
I have pieced together your story
a voyage as an orphan escaping
the dreaded Roscommon Workhouse
last resort of the destitute during the Great Hunger
rescued you sailed with the first boat-load of
‘Irish girls of good character’
shipped to a bigoted colonial town
hungry for servants for free settlers
wives and mothers for emancipist farmers
on the edge of the ‘settled’ nineteen counties
you ‘married up’ to an older
battle-hardened English Trooper
turned Mounted Policeman then gold miner
who chased wealth from Tuena Creek
to Lambing Flat* where he tried
to drive Chinese miners
away from their diggings.
beside streams of alluvial gold
inside a miner’s slab hut
another battle of life played out
you birthed three children
and only two lived to their first birthday
meanwhile your ‘Sergeant on Patrol’
rode the goldfields before returning
home to you and his claim
which eventually paid off.
I came to acknowledge you
and to feel acknowledged
even if only by the wind
on unceded Wiradyuri Country
as I talked to you the setting sun
cast a narrow ray across your grave
sign enough that my voice had carried.
*The Lambing Flat Riots were a series of violent anti-Chinese
demonstrations by that took place from 1860 to 1861 in the
goldfields of NSW, Australia, in the Burrangong Region at
various sites including Wombat, Tipperary Gully and Lambing Flat.
A shattering
Worlds within words
beyond the storeroom door
rows of dusty books beckoned
neatly stacked sanctuaries
from the jagged norms
of domestic tempest
as a brooding thunderstorm
galvanised the plains
a crystal ashtray felled
our Christmas tree
glass baubles became projectiles
then razors for small bare feet
with the first thunder crack
his man-child’s rage also discharged
Lear-like, shame came too late
uncertainty’s arc flashed
then carbonised in my young eyes
before I sought refuge outside
on the verandah’s stolid concrete
I breathed in the petrichor
felt the lightning strikes’ power
& scootered in soothing figure eights
to try to process that
world without words.
© Linda Adair
Linda Adair is a poet as well as editor/publisher of Rochford Press magazine P76 No 9: Poetries of place/displacement, diaspora/odyssey which recently launched in Melbourne for both the print and online special editions. Adair grew up on Darug country without knowing whose land she stood on. She now lives on Darug and Gundungarra country in the Blue Mountains, Australia. She pays her respect to the Traditional Custodians of Country which always was, and always will, be Aboriginal. Her debut book The Unintended Consequences of the Shattering was published in 2020. Her poems have appeared in several issues of Live Encounters Poetry & Writing, Bluepepper, The Blue Nib, P76 Nos 8 & 9 the Sonic Poetry Festival Issue, Ozburp, To End All Wars, Messages from The Embers, Poetry for the Planet, Pure Slush Volume 25 and Work! Lifespan Vol 5 as well as various journals. She is working on a verse memoir of her family’s complex ‘settler’ colonist history. She featured at La Mama Poetica, Cuplet, Poetry at the Pub, Back to Newnes Day, and BigCi Open Day. She read at Sonic Poetry Festival events. She has been interviewed for 3CR’s Spoken Word program, read her work on Eastside Community Radio and read at Knox Bar, Chippendale for World Poetry Day.