by Alleyne Hall

Another poem in memory of my father, Constable Les Hall

Set to work another shift on these Melbourne docks, in midnight hours
As a cop, I was trained to follow patterns of thinking – no children’s imagining…
Knowing gangs got together to sort out their drugs, their stolen goods
In darkness I waited, looking for movements, listening for the slightest sounds
On these creaking wooden planks, where crooks and coppers roamed alike,
And me one of them, yet still and silent, waiting… All of a sudden, a wolf-like howl
Rang out from nowhere, making my hair stand on end, my body freeze!
I could not move, with fear of the unknown speaking loudest.
A floating ball of white came out of the darkness… Was this actually a ghost?
Had my mind broken down? There was nothing about this in our training as police!
With me wet and cold at midnight, my wife and son would have been warm in bed,
Not knowing my fate. Facing death by ghostly means, I saw this white ball
Drift toward me, shaking, with its howling growing louder. Watching closely
I saw feet appearing now, beneath a sheet, around the head of a man
Wearing pyjamas: escaped from a nearby asylum, as my questioning revealed…
When I escorted him back to that mental hospital, a nurse gratefully took him in.
Hardly a drug raid, but a case from midnight duty where imagination had its place.