Untitled - Song

played on mandolin

I’m lying in bed
But I’m thinking bout before
It’s the middle of the night
I’m thinking bout that speckled floor
That antiseptic smell
And the man who’s in the room
I tell him all he asks of me
Illuminate my gloom
I’m lying in bed
But I’m thinking bout that floor
How it saved me from his searching eyes
Say, I’ve been here before
It’s been a couple years
But here I am again
The things I’ve done aren’t working
And I’m worried it’ll end

I call and tell my mama
All the things I’m tryna do
She says, The world’s a heavy place
It takes it out of you
You can come and stay with me
If that’ll help at all
But I wanna see the world, mama
I wanna taste it all

He asks about my family
Whose history makes it hard to breathe
I tell him bout my grandma’s greys
About my daddy’s blues
I tell him that I know some tricks
For breathing
Got some good friendships
The kinda things that help a person through

I’m lying in bed
But I’m thinking bout the now
I’m thinking maybe things will change
For better or somehow
I’m thinking bout my dreams
And how I’ve maybe opened doors
Coz I was strong enough to stand
Upon that speckled floor
I want to get my passport stamped
I want to carve a trail on maps
I want to live my days out in the hills
I want to stoke the same woodfire
And curl up with my heart’s desire
And stamp out this old
Bone deep chill

Poem - Linda Cemetery

It’s funny how a place
feels so enlaced with sound.
I’m standing in a cemetery,
There’s no one else around.
I close my eyes to listen.
The wind breathes through the leaves
of the grasses in the valley
and the scrubby, thickened trees.

I remember once in Vic
I was talking to some friends
who live in the city,
where the highway winds and bends.
They told me that the silence
in the country drives them mad,
But I hear no silence anywhere,
least in these hills once clad
with violence and destruction.
I hear a lone bird’s song,
then another takes the call up
‘til a choir sings along.
And if I stayed ‘til sunset,
which often I have done,
I’d hear a trill of hidden frogs,
I’d bet you ten to one.
I love the noise and comfort
that surround these old headstones.
It’s a place I’m never lonely
even though I roam alone.

I’ve done my time in Melbourne,
and it too sang a song.
But the one out here feels more like me,
like I can sing along.

So, I wander through the new cut track
that sits behind the stones up back
and duck and weave through
paths that have been laid.
There’s always rain a breath away,
I feel it on my tongue,
and the valley’s clouds lie heavy,
as a newly sprung creek runs
through quartz and moss and tussocks on the hill.

And I think I sing this songbird’s song
and when the frogs trill, I’ll hum along.
And there’s nowhere – strangely –
That I feel more me.

So, if I’ve been quiet
or you sense I’ve been down,
and suddenly you don’t see me around,
chances are
I’m at the cemetery.

Poem – Queenstown Lullaby

There’s liquor leaking from your pores
under the velvet sky.
You once told me you’re sober.
I guess you aren’t tonight.
I drive you up Gormie Hill
to lie beneath the stars
to watch meteors dart and dance
not far from the old, wrecked car.
Its busted bonnet creaks
with rust and aged decay.
Once a Commodore or Charger,
but painted now to say
‘Tesla’, by some local joker
on some distant summer day.

So, the Queenstown ‘Tesla’
lies below us as we trudge
up the hillside in the dark,
chill wind giving us a nudge.

We exist shoulder to shoulder then,
watch for shifting shapes
of an aurora steeped in reds and greens
loosing the night’s dark cape.

You tell me that you feel
you always wash up here,
that existence is an ocean…

I imagine it as beer.
I imagine it as pills,
as the lighter you give flame.
I imagine it as all your scars.
But I’m quiet all the same.

I listen to you talking,
and have no answers here,
just the space the night has gifted us
in air so crisp and clear.

You tell me that you’re meant to die.
I scoff, say, ‘that’s not true.
Not any more true for me, at least,
than it is for you’.

We talk on other matters then
the night takes us away,
we oooh and ahhh at the aurora
‘til night beckons the day.

There’s a silent town, not far beneath
and I drive you home to bed.
With your sleepy eyes
and a weary hug,
I think on all you’ve said.
I think you’ll sleep the night away
and drift right through the dawn.
I’m heavy with your feelings,
but so thankful you were born.

Poem – A Lover’s Lament

My friends called it a soul connection.
I saw it as the same,
though I’m not sure where it sprung from
or if love was its true name.
But, it gripped me tightly –
and it grasps me sometimes still.
Though I try to free its claws,
I’m not sure I ever will.

I spend my nights forgetting
what it was to call me yours.
I never spend a moment
thinking of your firelit floor,
where we read each other chapters,
laughing, limb in limb,
or the backyard with a mattress
where we stargazed on a whim.
I never think of Trial Harbour
and waking to her shores,
or coffee on your tailgate.

I can’t remember anymore…

Not camping in the Pine Circle
and rolling from your swag.
And eating breakfast chocolate
feeling like a proper dag.

I’m not writing this to try again,
for what I do remember
is the stamping on each other
torturing a dying ember.
I remember trying so hard,
the both of us,
to breathe it back to life.
And the deep and sinking
Inkiness
of dead things in the night.
I remember lonely days,
with you sitting by my side.
But I don’t remember laughing
in sparkling Queenstown lights,
wrapped up in the dog leads,
tangled up in dark.
I remember you lamenting
that you had dulled my spark.
But I’ve forgotten the bridge
where I hid my face and said
that what I felt was love.

I’ll just remember now
instead.

I’m dismissing all the memories
of things that mighta-coulda been.

What’s past is a minefield
best avoided in my head.
I want what’s right before me
not the things that are long dead.

Chelsea Smith

I'm Chelsea. I've lived and worked, predominantly in ecological research, in Australia, the US, New Zealand and Thailand. I career changed to teaching in 2022 when I moved to Queenstown, Lutruwita/Tasmania. I've always loved reading but never saw myself as a writer. In 2024, during a time of personal flux, a close friend shared her poetry with me. Inspired, though previously ambivalent about poetry, I picked up a pen and we began exchanging poems. I now share work at local open mics and recently began learning the mandolin to explore songwriting. For me, writing is catharsis - imperfect, practical, and when I'm lucky - beautiful.