Just a bit of prose poetry about my city…

People say Adelaide is a small-minded city that can’t see past its own spreading suburbs. The wide streets are sun-burned, even in winter, and to drive them is to drive weeks and days that seem indifferent to everything. It’s a city that can slow down if it wants to – and most of the time it does. Take, for example, the couple kissing at the bus stop. I was listening to Chopin and gliding down Portrush during peak-hour, and I felt the city slow for a moment underneath all that traffic rush and when I had passed, everything went back to how it was. The light was tail-light red…

A bald man crosses the road at the traffic lights – he’s chewing gum.

The western suburbs: all the way from Glengowrie to Findon to West Lakes,

Are just full of people living and working. Just people – but no – is anyone just a person?  

Along the O-Bahn run the buses that shake the windows of the houses every time they pass,

People sitting, waiting, staring at their laps,

The runners along Linear Park, the cyclists, the dog-walkers,  

The trams along North Terrace following their cables.       

In Klemzig, the sun comes out patchy with cloud; faint lawnmower mixed with distant traffic noise wanders through the streets and noisy miners pierce the drone on its way to the coast.

The ocean – wide and wide and wider. People drifting along it and finding themselves again before the town starts to take bits of them away.  

Glenelg and her accompanying Mosley Square, the jetty, the Ferris wheel at night, planes coming to land, planes flying out, sunsets.      

Driving down to Glenelg at twilight I pass a cyclist on the Anzac Highway. On his own wide lane, he’s pretty much keeping pace with the cars. There’s something reminiscent of last century and late summer in the air, though it’s only September.

Brighton sinks into the November sun, holding all hands out for warmth and rolling good times.

The houses along Henley watch the sunset like they’re bored. The ocean curls and we ride electric scooters along the path, the wind barley touching us.

Adelaide’s better in the summer. In winter everything hunkers down and shrinks beneath the rain. The rain is like glitter on my windscreen. Driving at ninety and the glitter starts to tear itself upward like it’s crying. I watch this happen until I can’t see anymore, and the wipers start grunting and it’s just the road, the traffic lights, the headlights, and all the colours reflected therein.

The roads shiny-wet,

Near the foothills the misty rain gathers,

And the red brick houses with white window frames are comfortably sad.

Those huge evergreens along Brigalow Avenue,

The draping gums where magpies sit to watch the sunsets,

The old sandstone houses and their chimneys at night.

Quaint St Peters, Salisbury in the north, Modbury further south, Paradise,     

And at the foothills, Beaumont.

The tennis and netball courts lit up at night to show kids competing and parents standing around stamping their feet.

Adelaide – the City of Churches: Holy Trinity, Clayton Wesley, St Peters, St Raphaels, Christ Church, St Marys, old St Francis Xaviers Cathedral.

All these testaments to religious freedom, the proud endorsement of religious tolerance.

We and others drive past daily and will never see the insides of these and the likes of them,

Half past four in the morning and it’s quiet – Adelaide sleeps.