A Bush Poem Out of Dresden - Part One: German Roots

Feeling way more German as a tourist in Bayern than I ever did living in Baden-Wurttemberg.

I'm an Aussie out of Dresden via Washington, D.C.
And, since you asked, I'll tell the tale of how that came to be.

The bombs they fell on Dresden as my dad was born nearby.
The "good" guys fighting evil,  dropping evil from the sky.
So I wasn't even born yet, but became a refuge
When my father and his family fled westward to be free.

My dad was born in Rathen, which is now an exclusive resort town just outside of Dresden.  It was used by the DDR as an exclusive holiday resort for high-ranking Communist officials.

We are so psyched to be in the town that Opa was born in that we take pictures under every sign saying Rathen.

To think, Opa grew up among these very same houses.

A world away another man was out there fighting Japs.
He was there as Darwin burned, to help those Aussie chaps.
The Yanks, 'tis true, did have a rep - and tendency- to ogle
And, sure enough, his eye did land upon a sheila from Cayogle.

(It's their daughter, born in Brisbane, that I have got to thank.
She's why I find myself in Oz, although SHE'S now a Yank!)

My first few of Dresden.  The Catholic Church viewed from across the Elbe.

Back to the land of Dirndls, Lederhosen, Brats und Bier
'Cause MY parents haven't met yet and so I'm not really here!
'Tis a THIRD man sends his daughter overseas to learn and play.
She comes back speaking German.  And in the family way.

The Frauenkirche rebuilt.  My German heart.  My dad saw it last as a pile of rubble. 

She's young and doesn't get it, what the fuss is all about.
"So many nice American boys," her grandmother, she shouts.
But the deed it's been accomplished and they know it could be worse.
Although my dad's a German, at least they married first!

My kids playing in the Elbe, the same river Opa played in as a child  before emigrating to The West at the age of thirteen.

My mom, she graduates from school.  I'm born in finals week.
And I get my first passport, before I even speak.

So I grow up speaking German, learning English nights at home.
A rootless German Yankee with a tendency to roam.

Oh.  Here I am.  Feeling my roots among the cobblestone streets of Dresden.

My NEW Writers' Group is a Bunch of Poets! (With Photos From Australia Day!)

Australia Day, January 26.  Blending right in.

I went in search of a Writers' Group last week.  I'm missing that part of myself that The Group in Stuttgart helped me rediscover, the regular encouragement to work on what I enjoy, the validation that I am a person besides mother and household manager. 

Sigh.  I really really miss you guys.

So, what I found here, at a Tuesday morning book opening at the Strathpine library, was a roomful of poets.  For those of you who remember reading my one attempt at poetry a few years back (and I'm sorry if you do!), poetry is NOT my strong point.  Andrew seems to have that rhythm, but I don't. 

Still, I can enjoy it and so I walked right in.

The Canadian Mounted they ain't!  But then again, we don't have any aggressive neighbours to the south to protect against!  

First off these are Aussies.  So I was welcomed with open arms.  Secondly, they were mostly men, retired, and so....yeah, I was welcomed with open arms. (Never mind make-up and exercising, just head into a room of men in their sixties for a quick pick-me up!)  And when I mentioned that I wrote mostly personal narrative right now that didn't stop 'em for a minute.  In fact, a couple of them started right in reciting their poetry.

http://www.noelstallard.com/  


And that is how I was introduced to Australian Bush Poetry, a cousin of American Cowboy Poetry, an artform I find lively, sharp, witty, insightful, entertaining and imminently accessible to the masses.  I like it.  Whether I have any talent in that direction remains to be seen, but I have been invited to BI-MONTHLY meetings.  In any case, I need the push of creative individuals around me again.  And I am certainly more than willing to try something new.  Even in a roomful of poets.

Australian Pride.  If only we didn't have that British heritage that is going to force this poor child to eat Lammingtons.  How about a good fudge brownie instead?

Funny enough, I had been on Jim's photo blog  http://jimmartinphotoblog.blogspot.com/  only the day before and bemoaning the fact that I was unable to find a way to create those pictures in words.  I appreciate the visual much more than I ever did but I still feel my strong point is words.  (And Jim, your words TO the pictures make the pictures come alive for me.  The shots themselves are beautiful, but for me at least, it's the words you add to the pictures that make the story breathe.)  I'm a words lady, I guess.   (No kidding, right?!) 

And here these guys are, creating living images out of words. 

The other thing I liked is that Noel is able to write about something very personal, like national pride or national spirit, without becoming bogged down in trite sentiment and moralizing.  Two of my weaknesses.  These poems are FUN.  They convey the message, but they do it with light-hearted laughter.  There is no need for explanation.  (Oh dear, whatever will I do without my pithy life lessons at the end of every essay?!)

I'm still a shy photographer at best.  But I can catch'em on the sly!

So that I went right home that night and stayed up three hours composing the beginnings of my OWN Bush Ballad.  I had the rhythms in my head from Noel's reading and I believe I may have finally found a form to convey my sense of self without beating you all over the head with it.

The judgement is still out on whether reminiscences about GERMANY can be called AUSTRALIAN poetry but, unlike Germany and England who have officially declared multiculturalism to be a failure in their countries (and you'd better believe I have an essay on that!), Australia is proud of its migrant heritage. 

So here goes.  And even if it IS terrible, I've got some photos from Dresden interspersed to make it worth your while.  If noone else, I think my Daddy will get a kick out of it!

My Southern Cross!

Roots

Oh! There they are.

Roots?

So, we're going to Dresden today. My dad was born about 30 kilometers away in the town of Rathen. On February 24, 1945, 10 days after the bombs fell.

I think of his mother, my Oma, pregnant with what they THOUGHT were twins, mother of two small children already, watching the night skies light up as her city burned. What kind of a future could she imagine for her children?

Oma came to visit us a few times in the USA when I was still small. I remembered her as a serious woman. "Regal in her austerity" was the line I used in a highschool essay. Her black hair was always pulled back in a severe bun. She never wore pants. She always dressed in dark colors, even way before Opa died. This was in stark contrast to my American Grandma who wore her blonde hair down and bright summer-colored bermuda shorts.

I remember a recurring theme between my two grandmothers. Grandma would try to get Oma to go shopping in the USA. ''Buy a bathing suit for the pool.'' she'd say. "Buy some shorts and T-shirts, or at least a pretty summer dress while you are here." I never saw Oma in a bathing suit. It would have been black if she had worn one. Her skirts and sweaters were too warm for our Connecticut summers, but she was comfortable in them none-the-less. ''Oh. Those colors aren't for an old lady like me." Oma would tell Grandma. ''They are meant for someone young, like you.'' Oma was two years older than Grandma. Still is.

But Grandma's future husband came home from The War a hero. (He fought the Japanese on the Pacific front.) Oma's first husband, a German soldier, died early on. Her second husband, my Opa, was too old too fight. (Until the very end when they were sending anybody.) But he lost his factory, his livelihood, his country and his humanity.

Then the Russians came and he lost hope up ever getting them back.

He was an old, old, old, old man by the time I first remember him. And it stuns me now to think that he was only 70 when I was born. The War ended when he was in his late 40s. He and his young family fled East Germany when he was 60.

I never knew but a shell of an old man. But I can only imagine the bravery it took to leave. I can only imagine he did it for his children. He left the children from his first marriage in East Germany. His son became a prominent communist writer. His daughter, who had met her husband in a concentration camp when interred there for speaking out against government policy, moved to Israel and raised her children, my half-cousins, Jewish.

I grew up with cousins from Oma's first marriage. Imke now owns a specialty bookstore in Berlin. Her brother, Joerg, works for an international consulting firm. He is currently in Romania. Little Lars (who is now over six feet tall) is a nurse in Cologne. His brother Frank is a professor of - god, I would love to be smart enough to understand it - something chemical, subatomic, engineering or something of that sort.

None of us live near eachother, even within Germany.

My brother lives in Texas, my sister in Arizona. I am setting up home in Australia.

I'm sure this isn't what Oma envisioned when she looked upon the bombs falling on Dresden that day not so long ago. I'm sure she couldn't see anything but death and dishonor, futility and despair. She has thirteen great-grandchildren from the ''western'' cousins alone. (Opa's children were already in their twenties when my dad was born, and were living behind the Iron Curtain until twenty years ago, so I don't know anything about them. The Israeli cousins don't officially even know they are related to anyone German.) Oma's great-grandchildren are German, American, Italian and now Australian.

Funny enough, we cousins are a fifty-fifty split of free thinkers and super-achievers. (Sometimes both.)

We don't know eachother. We see eachother rarely, if at all. I assumed it was because I was raised on the other side of the Atlantic, and was too American to have anything in common with my German family any more.

But now I see my German side. I see that I am rootless here as well.

As the elder Herr Bauer and I stood looking out over his fields in Iglersreuth the other day we discussed my family's emigration. "Du koenntest mich nicht entwurzeln." he said. "You couldn't uproot me.'' And I imagined what it would have been like to have been born into a family who still owned and farmed their own land, who still lived together where they had been born for generations. Who KNEW their roots and who they were. (Who were lucky enough to end the war under American occupation and not the USSR.)

It would have been nice, I think. But it wouldn't have been me.

A lot of people tell me they admire our move to Australia. They consider us brave. They tell us they envy us, that they WISH they could do it, but that they don't have the courage or that they couldn't leave their families.

And I tell them it has nothing to do with courage.

It has to do with roots.

"I don't know where I'm going and I don't know where I've been."' (Rory Gallagher)

But I do know that I'm lucky not to be watching bombs fall, my country (any of them) destroy itself or it's citizens wage war on eachother for race, religion or power. I have the liberty and the power - and the fortune of circumstance - to determine my own future and that of my children.

Uprooted, yes. Entirely rootless maybe not.