Tuesday Poem

Thoughts on a Belgrave Train

The old gum

sheds its skin,

peeling like a lychee.

The sky is

draped like a blanket

over a bed of trees.

A case of mistaken identity.

Blackberries growing

through the barbed-wire fence.

Shopfront reads

“Fish connection” –

on-line dating?

Cigarette smoke unfolds

around your ears.

What music looks like.

Eleanor Lamb


Belgrave Line

At Bayswater -
a girl with caged rats -
people keep texting.

Tecoma station -
three kids, their bare-foot mum
eye-spy blackberries.

A woman, inked
Medusa on one shoulder,
touches my husband briefly.

The helmet-tattooed man
cracks his knuckle-dusters.
Girls read horoscopes.

Catherine Bateson, 2012 - 2013


Eleanor Lamb has completed a Bachelor of Arts degree with a double major in Creative Writing and Literature at Melbourne University and about to begin her Honours year. She has previously been published in Cordite Poetry Review. It's a treat to be able to feature an emerging poet on this blog - and  I really enjoy the clever wordplay and sharp observations in 'Thoughts on a Belgrave Train'

I wanted these two poem sequences to be a kind of conversation as Eleanor and I are friends, neighbours, writing buddies and she is teaching me ukulele! I hope you've enjoyed overhearing this train conversation.

If you'd like to read more Tuesday Poems, check out the Tuesday Day Poem blog, this week featuring a poem by Joanna Preston, and from there, skip over to more poetry via the sidebar links. Enrich your week!