Jerzy Beaumont

Truckstop Nights

These truckstop nights can recharge a soul. Take the overnighter; Jolimont to Southern Cross Station, with a single 3 am pitstop. Maybe Holbrook, maybe Albury. The air is sharp; not a knife’s edge, but a nail run along ribbon’s length. You can already smell the chill, the moisture that’ll bead as dew by morn, but you are fine; your scarf and jacket suffice. No gloves or beanie needed; it’s cool, not cold.

The coach is still.

These truckstop nights sing, if you listen right. The Tom Waits nights; not his dour stuff, but those ratbag barred teeth numbers! But you stand still as Liberty, exhaling deliberately, and know that you can be anyone tonight. You are master of your momentum. You’re halfway between There and Somewhere because you chose to move. The coach will leave soon; maybe in the fog of exhaustion, maybe in a squall of colic.

You cannot predict what’s to come.

These truckstop nights stand removed. The waystation lights are on. You wish they weren’t. The moon is shining for you, and you’re squandering the gift of its singular luminescence. You feel light. Your baggage is back on the coach. Your carry-on blues, your battered and depressed suitcase. When the future comes it walks with gravitas. The coach rumbles to life. Passengers drift to portside entrance. Savour the country air.

Time to go.

Bio: Jerzy ‘Brojay’ Beaumont is a poet currently studying a Bachelor of Writing at the University of Canberra, Australia. He works at the ACT Writers Centre & co-MCs That Poetry Thing at Smith’s Alternative. His work has been published in Cicerone Journal #1, FIRST 2017, ANALECTA 2018, and APJ 8.2 ‘Spoken’, as well as performed throughout Australia and the USA. He represented the ACT at the Australian Poetry Slam finals in 2017, and writes from the margin between cautionary tale and triumph.