Journey: the North Coast

P Hegarty 2012

This poem describes a train journey possibly from the city to a country location. The poem opens with the persona awakening having spent the night on the train. The persona cannot wait to view the familiar landscape of the bush and sea. This familiar natural world is rejuvenating and spiritually healing.It is a journey on which they remember twelve unhappy months in the city possible separated from friends and loved ones. This physical journey also prompts older happier memories of home.Towards the end of the train journey there is a gratifying realisation that a painful chapter of their life has come to an end and that now they can now take stock again and wonder about, and imagine other more meaningful directions to take in their life ahead.

Next thing, I wake up in a swaying bunk. as though on board a clipper lying in the sea, and it’s the train, that booms and cracks, it tears the wind apart. Now the man’s gone who had the bunk below me. I swing out, cover his bed and rattle up the sash— there’s sunlight rotating off the drab carpet. And the water sways solidly in its silver basin, so cold it joins together through my hand.

• The journey is recounted in first person allowing the reader to share the diverse range of imagery and the sensations and mood stimulated by this physical journey through familiar landscape.

• The tactile image swaying recreates the movement of the train as the persona feels propelled forward to their destination.

The persona’s enthusiasm is contagious as we join him mid journey. The opening colloquial phrase ‘The next thing’ reminds us of an child recounting a series of exciting events. He imagines himself on a sailing ship on the high seas. The aural imagery created in the onomatopoeia of the words ‘booms’ and ‘cracks’ and the verb ‘tears’ creates a sense of powerful energy and capture the excitement and celebration of this emotional journey

• The savage primal power of the engine that ‘tears the wind apart’ matches his vitality and vigour. He can’t wait to let in the abundant light now that they have symbolically left the darkness of the night and twelve unhappy months spent in the city behind.

• The poem is written in present tense and this creates a dramatic immediacy of a physical and emotional journey unfolding as the train travels onwards…

• The adverbs ‘next’, ‘now’, create suspense and a sequential order and punctuate the different stages of this journey.

• The active verbs ‘I swing out’ ‘…rattle up the sash’ show how he eagerly embraces the day in joyful anticipation of returning home

• Poem dominated by airiness and light in contrast to the ‘drab’ interior of the train

I see from where I’m bent One of those bright crockery days that belong to so much I remember. The train’s shadow, like a bird’s, flees on the blue and silver paddocks, over fences that look split from stone, and banks of fern, a red clay bank, full of roots, over a dark creek, with logs and leaves suspended,

• The poem is dominated by images of light, purity, colour emphasising this journey of emotional and spiritual regeneration

• The verb ‘flees’ suggest escape as they appear to swoop over the colourful landscape with fences, bank and creeks providing no barrier on this journey

• The persona want to visually absorb as much as possible of the familiar reassuring ancient landscape of ‘clay’ and ‘stone’

There is a comforting freshness and purity in the domesticity of the metaphor describing the morning as ‘One of those bright crockery days’. The sensation evoking fond memories from the past, as the speaker returns imaginatively to their formative years on the North Coast. The simile comparing the train to a bird emphasises its speed as it rushes the persona to his destination. The bird also symbolises freedom and that of the spirit soaring in celebration of a new day, a return to a happier time and a happier place

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nude_Descending_a_Staircase,_No._2 Duchamp

and blackened tree trunks. Down these slopes move, as a nude descends a staircase, slender white gum trees, and now the country bursts open on the sea— across a calico beach, unfurling; strewn with flakes of light that make the whole compartment whirl.

• The persona notes the detail of familiar iconic Australian images of ‘blackened tree trunks’ and the evocative description of the gums in the allusion to the painting “Nudes Descending a Staircase”. This allusion to the cubist painting by Duchamp suggests a sense cylindrical movement of shapes merging in colour and light. The movement of the train creates the illusion of the trees marching towards them in cinematic stop motion fashion.

• The sudden switching from image to image emphasises the speed of the train and the rapidly changing landscape

• The powerful exhilaration created by the verb “bursts” and the familiar domestic image created in the metaphor comparing the ‘unfurling’ beach to ‘calico’ reinforce the mood of unrestrained /elation/celebration

• The metaphor; ‘Strewn with flakes of light’ continues this festive mood as does the verb ‘whirl’ which also suggests a dance of unhindered delight. The persona sees their mood matched and mirrored in the beauty of nature…vitality

Shuttering shadows. I rise into the mirror rested. I’ll leave my hair ruffled a bit that way—fold the pyjamas, stow the book and wash bag. Everything done, press down the latches into the case, that for twelve months I’ve watched standing out of a morning, above the wardrobe in a furnished room. (Gray 1998,

• “Stuttering shadows” as the train begins to slow down• Hair “ruffled” symbolic of his new found sense freedom leaving a life of conformity behind• “Press down the latches” suggests certainty, finality, an escape from ‘twelve months…in a

furnished room’. • He has watched these latches ‘standing out ‘ in longing anticipation of this day• The persona realises they have closed one chapter in their life and now anticipate and

ponder on the next • The last two lines are short and terse indicative of his twelve month experience in the city• He describes himself as ‘rested’…sated and reassured by the sensory journey…there is a

sense of contentment… a yearning satisfied now that he is home and imagines a more optimistic future ahead.