A poem: ‘Marcoola morning’

The lift took longer than usual. 7am peak hour. When it reluctantly opened with a groan, two old salts were standing there in crisp white T-shirts, shorts in garish but faded colours and the Sunny Coast standard-issue footwear, thongs. My level 2 neighbour hung back. He’d wait till the lift returned once the rest of us had been deposited to the ground floor – there was no room for his bicycle.

I’d heard from my balcony last night a gathering of men. From the tops of their heads, I’d guessed them to be in their sixties. They took up the whole outdoor BBQ area. It looked to be a reunion of some kind. Old workmates, maybe? A special birthday? Handshakes and wide smiles in greeting. Conviviality, laughter in peels, punctuating solid stories, no doubt. The sound of their chatter wafted up through the open windows into the wee hours.

Here in the lift looked to be two of the group. Given how late they’d partied, I was surprised to see them up so early. Would they’ve stayed up even later, swapping yarns into the night in one of their rooms? If so, they’d not have had much time for sleep. But 7am might not be early for them. My plumber told me he wakes at 4.30 each morning. Even in retirement, even after little sleep, perhaps the body can’t help but wake with the birds, long after the alarm clock’s been left off.

I asked one of the salts where he gets his coffee. For a short strip of shops, this tiny town has four strong options.

‘I don’t drink it. Hot ruined water, never touched the stuff.’

But he was headed to one of the cafés that always seemed to have a crop of old blokes yapping out the front, the one called Patron. Meeting mates.

‘I’m a filthy smoker, though. Don’t even drink that much. But I’ve got the worst of the lot.’

His gravelly voice testified. I heard myself encouraging him.

‘You know what? As long as you enjoy it, why not? If it makes you feel good, do it.’

It might not be fashionable to say so, but I feel for smokers. So many people look down on them, consider them dirty and undisciplined, selfish, stinky. Banished more and more to the margins.

Maybe we haven’t moved much from being a police state where the populace is heavily monitored, harshly punished, justice often absent. We haven’t learned to trust each other to live as adults capable of running our own lives, making our own choices. The voice and hand of authority are still raised, ever hovering in our peripheral vision, creating unease, promoting doubt in our abilities, cultivating guilt, stoking shame. It’s like living in a strait jacket, only worse because often we’re unaware it’s even there.

Wrapping up this unexpected contemplation, sparked by the man’s clear guilt about his smoking addiction, I turned to him as we approached the traffic lights where we’d cross to the shops.

‘Have a good day, mate.’

‘You too. Ta-ta.’

by Desanka Vukelich, 2024