Pehrtree

Today's pehrtree reading comes courtesy of Mousse Dawe, well known from one end of Errol Street, North Melbourne, to the other.

BICYCLE

When children are born in Melbournia,

They are covered in safety helmets, laid on basketed trikes,

Having already begun a lifetime’s pedalling.

Can’t, they cry, can’t… feebly at first,

While parents playfully race with them

To the end of the block: no, you can! (And sometimes they can…)

Hoisted shoulder high for their first market ride,

They are like innocent hippies who have been years wobbling

To their first Woodstock,

Until now, hearts shrapnelled with rapture,

Or confusion, or anxiety, or whatever,

They break surface and are forever lost

In the organic flood of sound, a voice

Like the voice of God booms from the stalls,

That’s really not appropriate! How dare you! and the covenant is sealed.

Tofu and mung beans they shall eat,

They will forswear the processed, cling to the local,

And behold their developmental applications go through the council to… somewhere.

So the mythology will be perpetually renewed,

Just like the wheels on the bike, going round round round,

On a thousand blocks, the houses changing,

The importance of living an ecologically respectful biodynamic sustainable lifestyle forever the same,

Loyally crying, can’t, can’t (if feebly) to the end

Having seen in the bespectacled recruit from King Street the hope of their salvation.

Any similarity to the poem Life Cycle by Bruce Dawe is purely coincidental, and will not be further entered into unless you really want to.