FINISHING UP by Andrew Lansdown

Nightfall … and I am still here
in the school at the prison farm.

My children will be at the table, filling
their mouths with food and chatter.

And the littlest one will be asking
her mother, “Where is Daddy?”

I am where my resignation
has led me. My roguish students

are in the compound, locked up
for the night. Except for the sentries

the guards are gone. I am alone,
finishing up. Did I miss someone

when I said goodbye? Does it matter?
We have been good to one another,

these bad men and I. I try not
to think I will never see them again.

I am alone. I look out the window.
The forest is in silhouette.

On the lawn, almost dissolved
in the dusk, a young kangaroo

hunches on its haunches to graze.
It was not there a moment ago and

in a moment when I open the door
it will not be there again.

Although “Finishing Up” was published for the first time in Quadrant magazine in March this year, it is a poem that I began writing in 1987. At the time, I didn’t feel the poem was good enough to publish and I couldn’t work out how to make it good enough. However, I did feel it had “something” and so I kept it in file with other “almost” poems. I came back to it last year and substantially revised it into its present form. And I am pleased with it now.

The gist of the poem is clear from the text of the poem. But a few specific details may be of interest. I was at the time the education officer-in-charge of the education centre at Barton’s Mill Prison Farm. The farm held minimum security male prisoners and was located near Pickering Brook in Western Australia. I had been granted leave without pay for a year in order to write a book on the Swan waterways with the painter Donald Green. The poem picks up on my mood as I stayed late to pack up my things on the last day at the prison.

Andrew Lansdown’s most recent books are: a collection of poetry titled Fontanelle (Five Islands Press); a collection of short stories titled The Dispossessed (Interactive Press); and three fantasy novels titled With My Knife, Dragonfox and The Red Dragon (Omnibus Books/ Scholastic Australia). Picaro Press has just republished his poetry collection, Waking and Always, first released by Angus & Robertson Publishers in 1987. More details about Andrew and his work can be found at http://andrewlansdown.com